


The Hunt

by Gimmemocha



Series: The Hero & the Lion [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 19:22:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4275084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gimmemocha/pseuds/Gimmemocha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neria Surana, Warden-Commander of the Grey Wardens and Hero of Ferelden, has brought Thom Rainier into the Grey Wardens. Other recruits are waiting to join, and tradition demands they hunt darkspawn to gather their own vials of blood for the Joining ritual. As fortune would have it, Thom Rainier has had visions of a Broodmother in the vicinity. Now the Wardens and their recruits are on the hunt. But Inquisitor Evelyn Trevelyan has no intention of letting someone else hunt on Inquisition lands, and has brought her own party along. None of them have ever seen a true Darkspawn horde. None of them have ever seen Wardens in action. None of them have ever faced such odds of becoming Tainted. It's Neria's job to see they beat those odds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Departure

**Author's Note:**

> ((Whee! Here we go. I'm sure I'll kick myself later for not bringing Varric along, but the party is crowded enough as it is. I'll do my best to make this stand-alone, but you may want to read The Promise, at least, to get some of the backstory. If you want to read my full headcanon, the order for reading would be:  
> Desire -- Neria, post-Dragon Age Origins/Awakenings, pre-Inquisition  
> Two Weeks (BDSM porn, fair warning) -- Evelyn/Iron Bull, Inquisition post-Haven  
> The Storytellers -- Neria & Varric, immediately post-Inquisition  
> The Promise -- Neria/Cullen, picks up where Storytellers ends))

They stumbled toward the mountain keep, the man and the bear. Even Grey Warden stamina had its limits, and he had reached his about an hour before. But neither of them mentioned stopping, not with Skyhold so close, so they pushed on through the storm. If his hand fell from time to time to the bear's powerful shoulders, if his hand knotted in the thick layer of fur that kept her warm, so be it. It was why she walked so close to him.

Sometimes he fell back to walk in her wake, but it was harder on them both when he did that. Easier walking, but harder to remember to keep walking. Harder on her because her great furry head would swing back toward him from time to time, making sure he stayed with her.

So he plodded on beside her through the howling wind of the blizzard and hoped she wasn't walking them right off a cliff.

When the wind stopped, it was such a novel sensation it took him long minutes to recognize its absence. Wearily, he looked up to see the bulk of Skyhold towering over him. The bear nudged him.

"Aye," he said. "I know." Lifting a mailed fist, he hammered the wooden doors.

After a moment, a guard's head peered down from the walls. "Who goes?"

"Black—"

The bear growled.

"Fine," he muttered. "Warden Thom Rainier," he yelled, "and the Warden-Commander. Let us in, you git, before we freeze."

Her chuff was audible even over the storm winds that blew over and past them.

"I'll apologize tomorrow," he said.

The doors cracked open, and together they slid inside.

Not until the doors closed again behind them did she transform, the green-white light of her magic flaring to hide the exact moment of change. He squinted against the light, and when he could see clearly, his commander stood beside him.

"Go get some sleep," Neria Surana, Commander of the Grey, said.

"And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, we will discuss tomorrow." Her smile was faint, but he knew her better now, could read the plans already forming behind her eyes. "Sleep well."

He glanced over at the tower door near them. "I will," he said. "You try to sleep at all."

She chuckled, low and soft, and left him to head toward the stables as she walked toward the stairs on the wall.

 

The tower room was dark, cold. Winter winds whistled through the narrow windows, stealing away what heat still remained from her bear form.

She was exhausted.

They should have stopped hours before, had been walking through the mountains since just pre-dawn in an attempt to reach Skyhold. In the end, the only thing that had kept her going was Thom. Because the only thing that had kept her going was her thoughts of the man sleeping just overhead.

Cullen. She had wanted to reach Cullen, had not wanted to spend another cold night outside the circle of his arms. So she had simply nodded when they had been warned that a blizzard was brewing in the mountains, nodded and kept walking. By the time the blizzard had hit and she had realized the magnitude of her mistake, there was no safe place to stop. Even if she had found a hollow or cave to curl up in, Thom would not have survived. So she had to keep going.

But he had survived. They both had. And now they were home.

She sat in the chair behind his desk, just for a moment, letting her pack fall off her shoulders. Cullen was close. That was enough for now. She needed a moment to marshal her strength before she could face the climb up the long ladder. 

Just a moment, she promised herself, closing her eyes.

She woke, feeling solid arms slide under her legs, around her back. Felt herself lifted and cradled against a broad chest. "Cullen?"

"Yes," he said, sitting carefully in the chair he'd just removed her from, draping her over his lap.

"Didn't mean to fall asleep." She nuzzled into his chest, taking a slow, long inhale of his scent. He smelled so good to her, felt so warm and solid. Another layer of tension slid away from her, and she relaxed deeper into him.

"You're tired," he said. "I don't think anyone expected a blizzard this bad. I thought you might wait it out."

"No. I wanted to get back."

"You found them, then?"

She nodded, memory making her open her eyes. "We found them."

"And did you slay them all, like good Grey Wardens?"

That drew a sleepy chuckle from her. "No," she said. "There were too many, and the recruits need to be tested against them. I'll take them back out, with Thom."

He shifted a little, draping a blanket over both of them. There wasn't usually a blanket on his desk. Neria peeked around, uncertain if they were still in the office, but they were. He must have brought it down from the loft.

"Are you telling me that you were actually restrained and careful and didn't go charging into a cavern full of darkspawn? Hardly Grey Warden behavior."

"Well," she allowed, "not all the way into the cavern. There were too many for two."

"So that's why you pushed so hard to get back. You needed your recruits."

"No," she said, closing her eyes again. "I needed you."

He was silent so long, she slid toward sleep again. Just on the verge of dreams, she felt his hand stroke her hair. "Rest," he said, his voice husky and low.

She did.

 

Despite waking up early, she still didn't make it to breakfast before Thom. He glanced up at her from a plate of fried meat (goat, she thought). One corner of his mouth twitched upward as he paused in eating to break open a biscuit.

"Commander," he said mildly. "Sleep well?"

"Hush," she said, sitting across from him and fighting a smile.

He chuckled. "Nice to know you can still blush," he said before stuffing half the biscuit in his mouth.

"Nice to know you've recovered enough to tease your commanding officer. We'll wait out the blizzard, then head back out. I haven't heard any guesses on how long it will last, though."

A new voice broke into the conversation. "Don't want to kill your recruits before they even reach the darkspawn, is that it?"

Neria glanced over at the Inquisitor. "Something like that," she agreed. "Good morning, Your Worship."

"Good morning, Warden-Commander. I was looking for my commander, but then Josie told me that you'd arrived last night and I thought he might be having a bit of a lie-in."

Neria refused to be baited a second time. "He was meeting with some of his captains to discuss mock battles in the deep snow," she said, accepting a cup of tea from a servant, offering a faint smile in return.

"Doesn't believe in vacations, that one," Evelyn said. "Slow down, Blackwall. There's plenty to eat, I promise we won't run out."

"Thom," Neria corrected. "Don't mind him. We all eat like that in the beginning."

"Maker save us, and you'll be bringing a whole horde of them back with you from the hunt? I'll tell Ser Morris to lay in extra stores."

Thom wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. "Bloody well right," he said. "How long does this last?"

"It varies," Neria said. "A couple of months, for me. Your body is changing. It needs fuel to do it. Don't skimp. The results aren't attractive." She nudged a bowl of preserves toward him before finally taking a biscuit for herself.

Evelyn watched Thom eat, fascinated, before she shook her head. "I thought I'd go with you, when you leave," she said.

"No," Neria replied, piling slices of the meat onto her biscuit.

The Inquisitor blinked, then laughed. "Not much for diplomacy, are you?"

Neria tipped her head slightly toward the younger woman and offered a smile. "Not really, I'm afraid," she said. "I never learned it."

"Never had to," said a low, bass voice. Tal Vashoth took a seat beside Evelyn, nudging her over so he could sit between Neria and her. With a sigh, Evelyn got up and moved to the opposite side of the table, sitting beside Thom.

"No," Neria said. "Mostly, people do what I tell them to do."

"I know the feeling," Evelyn said. "That's why I have Josephine. In any case, I should have said I'm coming with you when you leave."

Neria glanced sideways – and up and up – at Tal Vashoth. Iron Bull, she reminded herself. He had a name.

Bull shrugged, a lift and drop of one absurdly broad shoulder. "Don't look at me," he said. "We had this fight."

"Repeatedly," Evelyn said. "But whether he likes it or not, a horde of breeding darkspawn is an Inquisition matter, and the Inquisitor says we go."

"I rather think it's a Grey Warden matter," Neria replied, "and the Commander of the Grey says you do not. Fighting darkspawn is nothing like fighting Templars. One splatter of blood, and you'll die. Then there'll be no more Inquisitor."

"I've fought them before."

"Isolated units. Not in concentrated masses, not in the numbers we'll be fighting. It will be messy and bloody, and you'll almost certainly get infected."

"If there are as many as you say, you'll need more than you, Bla—Sorry, more than you, Thom, and a handful of recruits."

Neria stared at the crumbs on her plate, remembering her first Broodmother. Remembering Branka. "I've done it before with fewer," she said.

"And as I recall from the stories," Evelyn continued, "most of your companions during the Blight weren't Wardens, but none of them died from darkspawn blood."

"Nor were any of them kings, queens, or Inquisitors. The risk is too great, Your Worship."

A note of true annoyance crept into Evelyn's tone. "I've asked you to stop calling me that."

"True. The risk is too great, Inquisitor."

"I'll only follow you, you know."

Neria didn't look up. "As you like. Any darkspawn behind me will be dead."

"Commander."

Now Neria looked at Evelyn. The Inquisitor's expression was set, hard. "There are darkspawn breeding on land protected by the Inquisition. If it is inconvenient for you, then my apologies, but the Inquisition is going. If the Wardens wish to accompany us, they are welcome to."

Softly, Neria asked, "Is this where the line is drawn, then?"

"It is where we meet. Whether a line is drawn or not is entirely your choice."

She ran over her options. She could take Thom and the recruits and leave in the middle of the night. However, she didn't think their welcome would be warm on their return and the Grey Wardens had few enough allies as it was. She couldn't be sure how long Evelyn Trevelyan would hold a grudge, but perhaps it wasn't worth finding out, either.

Neria's jaw tightened. "Very well, Inquisitor. But I must insist that this be a Grey Warden expedition. You will be under my command in the field, and any order I give must be obeyed promptly and without question."

"Done!" Evelyn said, good cheer restored just that quickly.

"Then I suggest you spend the rest of the blizzard discussing with your advisors what will become of the Inquisition if you are infected. The odds heavily favor it."

"Oh, I'm sure Josie has a document or a writ or something around here somewhere that covers such a contingency. I'll speak with her and be ready to leave in a trice."

So saying, Evelyn sprang up from the table and strode toward the door, pausing when Iron Bull did not get up and follow her. "Bull?" she asked.

"I'll catch up."

"Bull…" A note of warning crept in.

"Evelyn."

She sighed. "Fine. No dismemberment."

"No promises."

Evelyn chuckled and left the room.

Thom glanced between the giant Tal Vashoth and Neria, but kept eating.

Neria sipped some tea.

Bull waited.

"Well if you can't control her, how do you expect me to?" Neria asked finally.

"I know, I know," he said. "I keep wanting to threaten to kill you if she dies, but you warned her fairly. I still don't like it."

"Neither do I. But I'd just as soon the Grey Wardens not alienate the Inquisition quite yet." She paused. "Which, of course, would include not getting the Inquisitor killed. I'll keep her as safe as possible. You do the same. Together, we might get her through this."

"That will have to do, I guess." He stood and took two steps toward the door before stopping. "Oh, and Warden? If she dies, I'll kill you."

 

Neria sat astride her horse, wondering which of them was the more uneasy with the entire situation. 

Horses, as a general rule, did not like Grey Wardens. The taint, it was suspected. She knew that Weisshaupt had some mounts that were trained to tolerate it, but though Dennet had done his best with this one, it wasn't entirely sure it liked having her up there. The horse tended to sidle and sidestep, to toss its head and shudder.

Which would not have been insurmountable difficulties, except that Neria had never ridden a horse in her life. There had been no reason to in the tower, and after she left, she had become a Grey Warden. There was a reason Wardens walked everywhere.

Too, she was vastly unhappy – and annoyed – with the company around her.

Oh, there was Thom, handling his skittish mount much better than she was. The recruits were as yet untainted and were having no troubles as long as they stayed upwind from the two Grey Wardens. And to her right rode the Inquisitor, an addition she'd resigned herself to, effortlessly controlling her splotchy warsteed as she conversed with the Tal Vashoth striding comfortably alongside her.

Those two, she'd expected and accepted.

Dorian, riding with Thom and teasing him about something or other, she hadn't expected. Dorian hated being out in the field. He preferred study and investigation, testing new techniques and learning new magic. That, she suspected, was why he'd petitioned to come along. He always made time to speak with her, to ask her about magic, the things she had learned and what she could do.

He had also been seeking out stories about what she could do, as if he suspected she weren't quite telling him the whole truth. This was his chance, she assumed, to see what the truth was. To see Warden-Commander Neria Surana in combat. 

She didn't like his inclusion, didn't like the added risk of someone else becoming infected, but truth be told, part of her hoped he would be. He would be a formidable Grey Warden. His intellect, providing it didn't become overwhelmed by his desire to become involved in Tevinter politics, would be a great asset. He just had to learn how to release some of his control.

So even him, she wasn't entirely dismayed to accept into the hunting party.

But to her left, just as comfortable as the Inquisitor, was Cullen.

Cullen, who, to the best of her knowledge, had almost never left Skyhold. As a commander, his place was to command, not to fight personally in minor field skirmishes. Cullen, who had never even discussed the matter with her, simply shown up in the courtyard the morning of departure and announced he was traveling as part of Evelyn's party.

The courtyard had gone completely silent after that, except for the sounds of Cullen adjusting the tack and settling his gear onto the back skirt behind the saddle's cantle. He hadn't discussed it with her, hadn't even mentioned it. He had, perhaps, been counting on the fact that she wouldn't want to start a scene in the courtyard.

And he was right, that was the part that irked her the most in a way. After denying the Inquisitor and being overruled, she had no wish to repeat an experience that would further erode what authority she had. Too, she knew she had absolutely no say in who the Inquisitor brought along. Evelyn could have taken all of Skyhold and Neria would have had to accept it. There was no point in starting a war over Cullen.

But personally, as his lover, she had plenty to say to him. Just as soon as they stopped for the night.

Or perhaps he'd not wait that long.

Neria's eyes were straight ahead, so she didn't see the silent signal that caused Evelyn and Iron Bull to drop back among the recruits. She simply gritted her teeth and waited.

"You haven't said a word to me all morning," Cullen said.

She didn't reply to that, either.

"You're angry."

Silence.

He sighed and looked forward. "I didn't want to argue with you, not on our one night alone together. Not when you'd only just gotten back. But when I heard that Evelyn was going with you, I asked her to take me along."

Nothing she hadn't already assumed.

"She asked if I'd spoken with you about it. When I said I hadn't, she refused to let me come along until I did."

"And yet, here you are."

"She's young," he said. "Sometimes that tells."

After several moments more of silence, he tried again. "I couldn't let you go alone."

She cocked an eyebrow at him, then glanced back over her shoulder at the people trailing behind. All of whom, she noticed, had dropped back even farther.

"Without me," he clarified. "I thought I could, thought I was prepared for it. Then when you came back, and I held you in my arms and you slept curled up against me, I couldn't do it. I can't not be with you, can't not protect you. Don't ask me to remain behind and let you go into danger without me."

She shook her head. "You've lost the line," she said. "I am not simply your lover. Warden-Commander Neria does not require your protection. In this situation, it is far more likely that I will end up having to protect and defend you than that I will require your protection. You are in far more danger than I am."

"I may become tainted," he said. "I know the risk."

"No you don't," she said, a thin thread of anger seeping into her voice. "You think you do, you assume you do. Have you ever seen anyone die of the taint? No." She held up a hand to forestall his answer. "You have not, I know you have not. I know this because you don't die of it. You change. You become something dark and twisted, a ghoul that runs with the darkspawn, serves them. If you become tainted, someone will have to kill you to prevent it, and how am I supposed to accept that?"

"There is another solution, if I become tainted," he said quietly.

"It is no solution, Cullen!" she snapped. Her horse skittered sideways and whinnied its distress. With a muttered curse, Neria fought it back under control. When the horse was again moving forward and more or less on the right path, she continued. "You could die of it. You know that. I've told you the odds, how many people die. Am I supposed to accept that option, that I will kill you one way or another?"

" _If_ I become infected and _if_ I don't survive the Joining," he said. She could hear his matching anger. "But these choices are not yours to make, Neria. You cannot keep me mewed up to protect me, any more than I could do the same for you. You're angry because you say I've blurred the line between my lover and the commander, but that is the very thing you're doing. You want me safe, but the Warden-Commander should want me along as a soldier. I notice you're not as angry about Dorian."

Well, that was true enough. "I'm angry that you didn't speak to me about it first. I'm angry that you've manipulated the situation, gone behind my back to achieve your ends."

"True," he admitted. "And for that much, I am sorry. I was selfish and wanted you – a happy and contented you – to myself until we left and I couldn't avoid it any longer. Can you forgive me for that?"

"Not yet," she said. "I'm still too angry."

They rode on next to each other, silent.

After a time, she said, "Ask me again tonight in our tent."

He chuckled, and she could hear the relief in his tone, sense it in the relaxation of his body. "Very well, Commander."

Good. Let him relax. Then he'd be off his guard when she really told him what she thought of his manipulative ways.

Neria smiled a little and waited for the night.


	2. The Arrival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((Still kind of a talky chapter, but considerably cut down from the first version. I want to really explore some of the relationships, and that's going to fall by the wayside once the actual fighting starts. There'll be time for introspection between battles, of course, but I wanted that 'click' that told me things were in place. There's a click at the end of this.))

He was smirking again. Evelyn could see it from the corner of her eye. "Stop enjoying this," she said.

Bull chuckled. "Can't help it," he said. "She's so angry she's about to shoot flaming wasps out of her ass."

"And you're enjoying that?"

"Some people need a set-down," he said. "Sure, she's sacrificed a lot and does good deeds and I know you have a thing for the Wardens. But she needs to learn how to lose. It's good for her."

"This is not an attractive side of you, Bull."

"Probably not. I don't like her. She's dangerous, and not just to darkspawn. If you didn't want to see this side of me, you should've stayed at Skyhold."

Evelyn studied the back of Neria's head, her stiff spine. "We'll teach her the value of working with us," she said. "Until then, I expect you to help keep the peace, Ben-Hassrath."

"Is that an order, Inquisitor?"

"Actually, it is."

He snorted. "Very well."

"I mean it."

"I know."

"You'll help her, then?"

He growled a little. Even her horse, Royeaux, ignored it, as familiar with the sound as she was. "Woman, you test my patience."

She smiled. "Some people need a set-down."

He snorted again, then lengthened his stride and jogged a bit, overtaking Neria's position at the head of the column.

Neria glanced at him, then back at the trail she was following. "This ought to be good," she murmured.

"You two kiss and make up?"

"Did you and the Inquisitor?"

"No make ups needed," he said. "She was right about this being the Inquisitor's decision. In this, she's the boss." He paused. "She's getting good at keeping the line between us clear."

"Point taken," she said with a downward twist to her lips. "Cullen and I need to work on that. As the Warden, I should be glad he's along. He's a skilled combatant. It's Neria who's angry with him."

"But it's the Warden who's reacting."

"You're not very subtle."

"So you think. Here, I'll take your mind off it. Pawn to e4."

"Chess?" she asked, blinking at him. "Here?"

His smile took on a slightly melancholic air. "It helps, sometimes. You do know how to play?"

"Oh, a little," she said. "I'm not very good."

It made him laugh. "I'm not falling for that one. Your move, Warden."

"Fine. Pawn to e5."

"Ben-Hassrath to f5."

"Ben-Hassrath?"

"Knight," he clarified. "Tricky little bastards that move left just when you think they're going right."

"I'll bear that in mind. Knight to c6."

"Nice."

 

Cullen nudged his horse up to Royeaux and Evelyn. "They're actually talking," he said. "That's new."

"I think they're playing a chess game, so this may end in bloodshed. Time will tell if this was one of my more inspired orders or a total cock-up."

"So business as usual, then."

She laughed. "Exactly so. I hear she's the type to hold grudges. You may have your work cut out for you, winning her back."

"I know," he said. "But I couldn't have done anything differently, and I'm hoping she'll see that."

"It's only because she cares, you know," Evelyn said softly. "She doesn't want me along for political reasons, but you… In protecting you, she's protecting her own heart."

After a moment, he managed to ask, "Is that your observation, or Bull's?"

"Don't ask me. Half the time I can't tell what's my own idea and what's him whispering in my ear. Either way, it's accurate."

"Why did you want to come along? Really, I mean? She's right about how dangerous it is for you."

She shifted in her saddle, making the well-worn leather creak. "I could say it's because it's a situation the Inquisition should handle."

"You could, but you've dispatched teams to other such situations and not gone yourself."

"I suppose… Partly, it's because I'm tired of being in Skyhold. Oh, I've ventured out a time or two, but I'm used to _doing_. It's become less choppy-chop and more talky-talk, as Sera would say. I'm not yet resigned to the idle life."

"Partly?"

She flashed a grin at him, altogether too impish for someone who wielded the political power she did. "Partly because I couldn't pass it up. The Hero of Ferelden, hunting darkspawn, and I'm supposed to sit in a keep and read about it later? Never."

He chuckled. "And there it is. Our Inquisitor is battle-mad. I knew it."

"As if you weren't curious, too. Don't you want to know if the tales are accurate? Dorian's been telling me some of them. They say she can set fire to an entire battlefield, create lightning bolts that can blacken the sky."

"And you want to see that? Maker preserve us all. Anyway, I know what she can do."

"You know what she could do," Evelyn said. "You haven't seen her fight either, not since she left the Tower. Who knows how powerful she truly is?"

Cullen's smile faded, and one gauntleted hand rose to touch the pouch hidden just under his belt, fingers tracing the shape of the small vial hidden there. "Who knows," he echoed.

 

"Tamassran to b2. Playing it safe, Warden?"

"Don't mistake preparation for cowardice, Tal Vashoth. You lost your queen too, you know. King to c8."

"Look, if you're just going to play around at this… Arishok's Tower to d1."

But her attention had wandered. She glanced around, but didn't rein in her horse. Instead, she turned partway around in the saddle. "Thom?" she called back.

In moments, Rainier had ridden up next to her. "Commander?"

"Feel that?"

He looked around, much as she had, like a hound casting for a scent. "Darkspawn."

"Yes," she said. "Can you tell which direction they're moving?"

Thom thought about it, but shook his head after a moment. "No," he said ruefully.

"You'll get there. They're moving away."

"They're reporting back to the others. They'll know we're coming," Bull said.

She nodded. "Yes. But they probably knew anyway. I only hope they haven't moved her."

"An interesting way of putting it."

"Broodmothers are too large to move on their own, even the Dwarven ones. They have to be moved by the darkspawn. In any case, once they knew they'd been found by Wardens, they knew that cavern is no longer safe. So they sent out a scouting party to watch for us."

"Smart," Bull grudged. "I didn't think darkspawn were that intelligent."

"They're canny," she said. "Some of them are quite intelligent. Basic tactics are well within their grasp. Speaking of which, pawn to b6."

"Any idea when we'll get to the cavern?" Bull asked, ignoring the chess for the moment.

Neria looked to Thom. "You're better at horseback distances than I am."

He looked around. "An hour? Maybe less. We're making better time than I expected."

Better time than Neria had expected as well. Cullen's trick of rotating the horses in the lead had served them well for breaking through the snow, and the distance that nine people, eight mounted, could move in a day and a half was surprising.

"We'll take a rest here," she decided. "Eat a hot meal. It'll likely be our last, unless someone wants to volunteer to carry firewood."

By the time she had kicked free of her stirrups and slid to the ground, the others had already started clearing a space in the snow for a fire. They didn't yet have the swift sureness of a team accustomed to traveling together, but they'd get there. She loosened her saddle cinch to give her horse some rest and watched the recruits.

They had, to some extent, isolated themselves from the rest of the party. Their status as Grey Warden recruits had set them apart, and they seemed sure neither how to integrate themselves nor even if they particularly wanted to. Neria approved. Grey Wardens learned quickly that they could rely only on other Grey Wardens, could trust only other Wardens. Could relate only to other Wardens. Best they learn that now.

Cullen touched her arm, then handed her a handful of dried fruit when she turned. She accepted it and didn't move away.

"You haven't forgiven me yet," he said.

"We slept in the same tent last night."

"In the same tent, but miles apart. You can't think I didn't notice."

She distracted herself by picking at a sliver of apple. 

"Was what I did so terrible?"

"I either trust you utterly, Cullen, or not at all. I don't know how to do it otherwise. You manipulated me. You took what you knew of me and played on that to achieve what you wanted, without honest discussion or consult."

"And you know why I did it."

"I do," she said, turning to her horse again, ostensibly to remove her water jug from the saddlebags. "But that doesn't mean I can make myself forgive."

When she turned around again, he was gone. In his place stood Iron Bull. He moved too quietly for someone of his size. It wasn't at all fair.

"You're being too hard on him, Warden."

"No," she replied. "I'm not."

He stared at her. His eye was slightly narrowed, the corners of his lips turned down just a touch in the straight, set line of his mouth. What fragile peace they'd managed to achieve between them shivered and threatened to snap.

It surprised her, a little, that she wanted the Tal Vashoth's good opinion. He was, or had been, Qunari. That fact alone had placed him high in her estimation, even with his death threats. She understood them, knew where they came from, and respected them. Even if she didn't trust him as far as she could kick him.

Too, the silent disapproval reminded her strongly of Arishok. He had rarely bothered to openly chastise her, not unless her transgression happened to be particularly bad. They had passed entire days in Seheron, in Par Vollen, without speaking at all. Just glances, expressions, small gestures that had conveyed much of what needed to be said.

After a moment, she swept a hand through the air and sighed. "Maybe a little," she allowed.

Bull grunted slightly. "Ben-Hassrath to e2," he said, then walked away.

She frowned, pictured it. "Really," she murmured, then gnawed thoughtfully on the dried apple.

 

Evelyn gave Royeaux a pat and looked over as Bull walked away from the Warden. "Well?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Eh. I think I've gotten a handle on her, finally."

"If I were inclined to be jealous, I'd be fuming about now. You never had a problem getting a handle on me."

He chuckled and set his hands at her waist. His fingers almost met, thumbs scant inches apart. "You were easy. Had you pegged within an hour."

"I think you're enjoying the challenge."

"Some," he agreed. "But it's sort of like handling a barrel of gaatlok. It looks stable, but the moment you don't respect it, boom. It starts raining body parts. I'm playing more than one chess game with her."

She slid a hand up his chest, silent comfort. "If anyone can win them, you can."

He grunted, then sat heavily in the snow, turning so his back was to her. Without being asked, Evelyn transferred her strokes to his shoulders, a slow massage that sought to steal away his tension. "Talk to me," she said. "Maybe I can help."

"Nah. Mostly it's this thing with Cullen. He keeps her stable. I solve that, she'll come back off that ledge she's on."

"Have you considered perhaps speaking with Cullen? This seems more like his mess than hers."

"I'll get to that, if I need to."

She bent, though not far, to kiss the back of his neck. "I admit, I still don't see what you see," she said. "She doesn't really mingle, but it's understandable. She has a lot on her mind, and it seems she's always thinking of her next move. You do that, too."

"I do it while I mingle. There's a difference."

"You also spend time thinking of how you'd kill everyone you meet. Not exactly a source of comfort."

"This from the trained assassin."

Evelyn chuckled. "Teach me to fence words with you," she said. "Still, though, she seems fine to me. I admit, she and Cullen both were happier before this argument, but I don't see her as unbalanced."

Evelyn increased the pressure. Her hands, wrists, and arms were strong from fighting and training. She managed to dig into the solid slabs of muscles, to find the points where she knew from long experience that his tension settled, and was rewarded with a grunt of pain and a sigh. "Cullen," he said again. "Cullen's the only one she sees."

"That's absurd. I've spoken with her. You have. She sees us just fine."

"No, she looks at you. When she looks at you, she sees the Inquisition. She sees alliance and political gain and weighs the cost of gaining it. When she looks at me, she sees threat and danger, and works out how to minimize both. She _sees_ Cullen. He's real to her. He matters because he's Cullen."

Evelyn thought about that, frowning a little. "And Thom, now," she said slowly. "He matters because he's a Warden."

"Mm. Yeah, I'll give you that one. But Thom's under her control. He's not an equal. She doesn't listen to him."

"So Thom can't control her if she starts to explode. Like gaatlok."

"Exactly."

Evelyn fell silent as she worked her way down either side of his spine, fingers walking across and into muscle. "A terrible risk, then, letting Cullen come along. But you wouldn't want me here without him. To use as a shield, if we have to."

"If we have to. Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

She draped herself over his back, nibbled the sweep of one ear. "Poor, lazy kadan," she teased. "Just when life was getting easy for you."

"Aigh! Wench! Stop that, not the ears!"

He surged to his feet and reached over one shoulder, grabbing her weapon harness and flinging her over him, down into the snow while she laughed.

 

Neria watched them, wistful, from beside the fire.

"Nauseating," Dorian said, plopping himself down next to her.

"Are they?" she asked, looking him over.

He ran a hand through his hair, further disrupting the normally coiffed strands. "Crawling into a stone-riddled bedroll after riding all day, then up before dawn if you please only to ride some more without a spot of decent beverage? Too cheerful about it all by half."

"Poor Dorian," she said. "Bereft of all semblance of civilization. You've a bit of crumb in your moustache, by the way. Just there." She pointed at her own face.

Cursing softly, Dorian scrubbed at his face. "I hope you're flattered," he said. "You know I'm only doing this for you."

"For me, or for your own curiosity?"

"Curiosity that could have been sated back in the relative comforts of Skyhold, dubious though they are! Do you know I'd only just gotten a decent bed put in that place?"

She chuckled. "I answered every question you had."

"Those were hardly answers. 'Stop trying to do it and just do it, Dorian,'" he mimicked. "What in all of Thedas was that supposed to mean?"

"Well when you say it, it does rather make me sound like Morrigan at her worst."

"I wouldn't know. That witch wouldn't even speak with me."

"So you came along to see first hand what you think I wouldn't explain?"

"You know very well I did. Now look at me. I'm a mess!"

She cocked her head and looked him over. "You are, rather. Some men like the tousled look, though. It makes you look more rugged."

He touched a hand to his hair again, uncertainly. "I don't like the rugged look," he mumbled. "I like the suave and dashing look."

"As you like," she said. "Comb your moustache, it's going every which way."

"Well it's no good making me sound petulant, you know," he complained.

"The Grey Wardens have a saying that might help you," she said, rising with a cup of hot tea. "Suck it up, buttercup."

She walked toward Cullen and his horse, sipping her tea, smiling against the mug as he called out, "Very helpful, Warden! Thank you ever so much!"

Cullen glanced over at her, then at Dorian. "And how is our resident Tevinter mage?"

"Rumpled and very annoyed at the fact," she said. "If only he weren't so adorable about it, I could probably stop smiling. Can't imagine that's helping his mood."

"Probably not." He eyed her uncertainly. "Is this a rapprochement? I'm not sure."

She dropped her gaze. "Let's say it means I know I should forgive you."

He sighed and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. "I'll take that, for now."

"Thank your Tal Vashoth," she said, voice muffled. "Honestly, if he manages to point out all my failings with chess moves and still beat me, I'm going to strangle him."

Cullen chuckled and looked down at her, tilting her face up to him. "Dare I kiss you, or am I still risking a bolt of lightning up my nose?"

"The danger is part of the fun," she said, grinning.

He grinned back at her, a slightly crooked smile tugged off center by the scar on his lip that she found too endearing by half, and took the risk.

"All right," Thom roared, "this isn't a bloody holiday! If you've all had your cookies and milk, mount up."

"You taste like cookies," Cullen whispered.

"Stop that," Neria hissed, blushing as she tried to straighten her braided hair.

He chuckled softly and let her go back to her horse.

 

They came to a halt in front of the gaping maw of the cave front. It had taken more than an hour to arrive, as some of the horses flatly refused to continue. Neria had shrugged, philosophical, and suggested letting them go free after everyone shared out the remaining supplies between them.

So they approached on foot.

Loranil led the group of four recruits as they caught up to Neria. "Well, Commander?"

She stared at the darkness, felt a shiver of anticipation. All else in her life was waiting for this, preparing for this. Soon she would be able to drop all facades, all control, and simply be what she had always been meant to be. "Well, recruit," she said softly.

He waited.

After a moment, she turned from the cave. "They're in there," she said, her voice clear and true, resounding off the rocks. "And they know we're out here. Darkspawn can sense Grey Wardens as surely as we can sense them. They'll be fighting to protect the Broodmother. Your job – your only job – is to collect four vials of darkspawn blood. And survive." 

Her green-on-blue eyes tracked toward the Inquisitor's party. "You have not faced this," she said. "You have not stood against wave after wave after wave, unending and hungry for your life. If they kill you, they'll drag your body away for food. Those are the lucky ones. If they don't…" She locked eyes with Evelyn. "If they don't, they'll drag you away to replace the Broodmother I intend to destroy. They will corrupt you, rape you, fill you with their seed until you birth one abomination after another. I suggest you kill yourself before they can."

She turned and walked into the cavern, leaving them to decide who would follow and in what order, knowing only that Thom would bring up the rear.

"Not exactly a stirring pre-battle speech," she heard one of the recruits – Kihm, she thought – say.

"What's there to say?" the Templar, Lysette, said. "We kill them all. We come back out."

"You hope," Aerlyn said. "Well, come on. We wanted to be Grey Wardens."

Neria heard the tap of Aerlyn's staff on stone echoing behind her.

A few steps in, Bull walked next to her. "Castle to g6, huh? You sure you're ready for this?"

"Are you?"

"We're setting up for a bloodbath."

"I'm aware."

"Just remember your promise." 

She looked up at him.

"You keep her as safe as possible. I'll do the same. Together, we get her through this."

He was looking straight ahead. His expression was bland, calm. For once, she saw through it. Softly, she replied, "I'll get them all through this. I don't like losing people. I never have. Chess is chess, but lives are real."

He looked down, measuring her, assessing. Slowly, he nodded. "Ben-Hassrath to f6," he said. "And let's see how you do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((And yes, the chess moves are from an actual game. I suck at chess, I had to cheat. There are moves that we don't see that take place off-screen, so if you're awesome at chess & still can't follow it, don't be surprised.))


	3. The Warden

Evelyn twisted and spun, ducking under the sword that whistled just overhead. She felt the drag of her right-hand dagger as it cut cleanly through the gap in the Hurlock's armor she had spotted, while she brought up her left-hand dagger to block an axe chop from a short, squat Genlock. Her right dagger carried through and thrust deep into the throat of the Genlock and she continued her turn, taking her back to the wounded-but-not-dead Hurlock…

…which flew backwards away from her, accompanied by the stench of burn and ozone and a flare of lightning.

She looked across the rocky cavern of dead bodies and saw the Warden-Commander turning away.

Evelyn sighed.

It looked like everyone had made it through this latest fight. Kihm had taken a wound, but was brushing aside Aerlyn's attempts to inspect it. She had mixed feelings about his inclusion among the Grey Warden recruits. He had been brought to Skyhold to further Evelyn's education in the less savory aspects of fighting, but their styles had been too different. Still, he hadn't left and she felt responsible for him.

But the Warden-Commander had made it clear, in her quiet but unyielding way, that Kihm was hers now, a Grey Warden, and no interference would be permitted. It had felt uncomfortably like being rapped on the hands by her tutor as a child.

And now, this.

Cullen was striding toward the recruits. He'd take care of Kihm's wound if it needed it. Neria and Thom had separated themselves, walking ahead to stare farther down the passage. The Wardens could sense darkspawn; none would sneak up on the small company while they watched. Off to one side, Bull was speaking quietly to Dorian.

That brought a faint smile to Evelyn's lips. She studied the Tevinter mage, the slight tilt to his head, the angle of his body, the way his hands moved. 

"Bull," she called. "A moment?"

They both looked over and Bull nodded, saying something else to Dorian that made the mage flush and frown before he walked over. Without being asked, he handed her a rag made as best she could tell from the ripped shirt of a fallen darkspawn.

Evelyn wiped her weapons clean and murmured, "Are you flirting with Dorian?"

"Not so he'd recognize it."

"I think he has a crush on you."

Bull chuckled, low and quiet. "Picked up on that, did you?"

"I suppose your Ben-Hassrath teachings had to take hold sooner or later."

"Do you mind?"

"No," she said. "I like Dorian. Are you going to bed him?"

His eyebrows rose briefly. She'd surprised him. "I thought about it," he said, head tilted.

Evelyn grinned. "You should, if you want to. He'd enjoy it."

"Oh I know _he_ would…"

She freed up a hand to reach up to Bull's chest, fingering the dragon tooth that dangled there from a thick leather cord. "Kadan," she murmured. She looked up at him. "Nothing you do with your body will affect what I feel for you in my heart."

He slid a hand into her hair, cupped her face in one giant palm. "Kadan," he rumbled.

Evelyn savored the moment, the touch, and closed her eyes. She turned her head slightly, brushing a kiss over the callouses of his skin. Then she grinned at him and wrinkled her nose. "Maybe just wait until we get home."

"I dunno," Bull said, glancing over one bare shoulder. "I kind of like him all rumpled and grumpy."

"I'll steal his shaving kit," she promised.

"Did you call me over to give me permission to seduce the Tevinter? Not that I mind. Let me know when I have the all-clear to go after Cullen, too."

Evelyn snorted. "If you think you can manage it, have at it. I think the Warden would have something to say on the subject, and it'd probably be punctuated with a few lightning bolts."

"True." But something in what she had said had given her away. "So it's the Warden you wanted to discuss?"

That stole her smile. "Mm," she said, cleaning her blades, watching her. 

Bull waited.

"How's the chess game going?" she asked finally.

"Getting near the end, I think."

"Who's going to win?"

With a grunt, he scratched at a bit of dried blood on his chest. "Dunno," he admitted. "She's playing defense, but if you can play a vicious defense, that's her game. All safety and maneuvering, and suddenly…" He slammed a fist into his opposite palm to illustrate the unspoken outcome, then shrugged.

Vicious defense. Made sense. 

"I'll speak with her," Evelyn decided.

"Just be careful with her."

Evelyn arched an eyebrow at him.

"Gaatlok, remember? I like all your body parts in one cohesive whole."

She smiled and leaned into him, tilting her head back. "My body parts like you, too."

One corner of his mouth lifted, and he buried a hand in her hair, grabbing a fistful of it to yank her head back, baring her throat to him. His pleased rumble made her shiver, and she felt her muscles soften, yield to his touch.

"Don't promise what you're not going to deliver," he said, tugging her back upright and shoving her toward Neria.

Evelyn sauntered away with an exaggerated sway to her hips. She had every intention on delivering, but sex with Bull in a camp was tricky at best. Privacy mostly meant an unspoken agreement not to talk about what was seen or overheard, but that didn't mean she wanted to test such a fragile agreement with the kind of performances she and Bull got up to.

Not that they had gone celibate. There was only so far he was willing to accommodate her bashfulness. She would have to wait to see what he had in mind for camp, now that they were actually in the cave system.

Thom glanced back as she approached and said something to Neria, before bowing his head a little to Evelyn and backing away. Evelyn frowned a bit. He'd never bowed before. 

Neria didn't turn as Evelyn approached. "Inquisitor," she murmured.

"Warden," Evelyn replied. "Anything?"

"Many things," she said. "But they're keeping their distance."

"Pity for them that we don't mean to keep ours."

That got her a faint smile.

"You're protecting me, Warden."

Neria looked over at her and blinked.

"In fights," Evelyn clarified. 

"I protect everyone."

"Me more than most."

That, she didn't dispute.

"Did Bull put you up to this?" Evelyn asked.

"Do you think he had to?"

Vicious defense, Evelyn reminded herself. This was just verbal maneuvering. "Explain to me why."

With a mostly stifled sigh, Neria turned from the tunnel and gestured toward their party. "They're all replaceable," she said. "Even me. You are not. It's that simple. There is no one else, no one on the face of Thedas, who can close the rifts. And there is no way to be sure they're all closed. Even now there could be one in some cave or back end, spewing out demons, and if you're gone, it will continue doing so."

"I've fought worse than darkspawn."

"Which doesn't mean they can't kill you."

Impatient, Evelyn shook her head. "So you expect, what, that I'll stay in Skyhold and only venture out to close a rift, when every one else has done the fighting?"

"Ideally, yes. But that isn't what you want to do, so you don't do it."

That stung. "It's not a matter of not wanting to. The Inquisition needed a face, a figurehead, and people needed to see me."

"And there are many of them in this cave, then?"

More than stung, it hurt. Evelyn didn't like to admit she had heroes, but she did, and many of them were Grey Wardens. Even the events at Adamant hadn't changed that. She had grown up with Grey Warden tales and Grey Warden heroics. They were mysterious, isolated warriors of great skill and cunning, appearing to save lives, woo maidens and farmboys, and vanish alone back into the misty dawn. Their bonds of brotherhood were legendary.

And here stood perhaps the greatest Warden of her time, as much as telling her that she was behaving like a selfish, spoiled child.

"I don't need you to protect me, Warden," Evelyn said, after working her way through several responses that would only have proven Neria correct. "You're throwing off my attacks. If you want to fight alongside me, do it from alongside me, not from across the room where I cannot anticipate and adapt to your assistance."

Politely, correctly, Neria inclined her head. Just as Thom had.

Evelyn stalked away, not pausing to apologize when her shoulder bumped Cullen's as they passed each other.

Cullen continued on toward Neria, watching Evelyn over his shoulder. "Making friends?" he asked.

Tension eased from Neria's shoulders and she smiled a little, more than a hint of wry self-deprecation in it. "It does seem to be a specialty of mine."

"She wants you to like her."

"She's a liability here."

"No," he said. "That's not what has your back up about her."

With a tilt of her head and a slight shift in her shoulders, she conceded the point.

"Why are you so hard on her?"

Softly, she admitted, "I don't know."

"Well, if you truly want the Inquisition as a Grey Warden ally, you should figure it out." To soften his words, he stroked her shoulder with one hand.

"I will," she promised him, glancing down the tunnel. "How's Kihm?"

"Fine," he said. "Just a scratch. Do we go on?"

"No," she said. "We do not." She looked up and over at him. "They're coming. Get everyone on their feet."

Cullen drew his sword as he turned. "To arms!" he called.

But it wasn't the tunnel she moved toward. "Ware the bridge!" Neria said, pointing to the rock arch over the chasm. 

On the far side of the bridge, darkspawn spewed into the wide cavern, their barks and roars echoing off the stone, rebounding from every side. Arrows whistled past, and Neria blurred momentarily blue as a shield ignited around her, encompassing Cullen within its boundaries. The sounds of battle joined, steel on steel and shouts, bounced back to them both.

 

Evelyn blurred into invisibility as she slid behind a darkspawn before burying both daggers in its back. Its howl of outrage and pain cut off when she yanked her knives back out again, dropping it to the cave floor. Arrows flashed past her, coming and going from both sides, and if she was having difficulty finding the front line of battle, it was understandable. There didn't seem to be one.

Evelyn's fighting style was more than just evasive, it let her keep a constant eye on what was happening. Bull had a better talent for understanding a battlefield; situational awareness, he'd called it. It wasn't something Evelyn had ever developed. She relied more on quick glimpses that her mind would put together in a seamless map of the conflict. 

But this muddy morass defeated her utterly. It was a wild melee of individual fights, and darkspawn kept pouring out of the crack in the far wall, overwhelming their tiny group of fighters. 

An attacker to her left abruptly lost his head, Bull's giant axe sweeping through to clear a circle around her. She snatched in a breath and took a longer look. "We're strung out!" she yelled. "Regroup on the bridge!"

Bull's voice carried farther than hers did. "Back to the bridge!" he bellowed.

Slow step by slow step, she and Bull fought their way backwards. She cleared the path behind, trusting him to keep the incoming forces at bay. She could see Thom, shield and sword moving in graceful harmony, protecting the elf archer, Loranil as they backed up. On the bridge itself, Lysette performed much the same function for Aerlyn as the mage frantically threw blasts of pure, unformed magic to help the retreat. She didn't see Kihm, but did hear pops and explosions to tell her he was holding the bridge foot.

She heard the shout, heard Thom bellowing, "Incoming!" Heard it, tried to look for it. 

A boulder maybe, or just a chunk of rock ripped from the cave wall, hit the ground beside her, sent her flying. Her head bounced off the wall.

"EVELYN!"

She recognized Bull's voice and tried to respond, but her body wouldn't cooperate. She tried to sit up, tried to move, _had_ to move. 

She failed.

Bull roared, defiance and fury. The shrieks and cackles of darkspawn swirled around her. She knew he fought to save her, but though she could understand these things, she could not react to them. Her body shifted on the stone floor of the cave as she tried again to stand. Blood flowed down her face, and she tried to spit it out. Her eyes focused, blurred, stung. 

More voices called out demands, shifting the field of battle around her. Slowly, Evelyn forced her feet under her. If she could focus just for a moment, one rift, one rip in the fade, would suck most of the darkspawn in. She lifted her shaking left hand.

The world exploded.

Searing heat boiled across her body, shoved by an icy wind that stung her exposed skin. Thunder cracked like a whip wielded by an angry god, covering all other sound. Someone yanked her from the ground, a warm, strong shield between her and the worst of the maelstrom that screamed around her. Bull, she knew, hiding her face close against him and balling herself up into as tiny a burden as possible.

Dimly, she heard him yelling against her ear. "—fucking Warden!"

She didn't understand, not until the blazing heat faded, the stinging ice pellets stopped – and how could both be hitting her at the same time? – and the fury of the wind was a noise only and not a vicious attack.

Bull dropped her to her feet, hands holding her shoulders to keep her upright. He shoved something into her hand, a potion bottle. Evelyn drank it down while turning away from him, looking back at the battlefield.

They stood on the bridge, about mid-span. Not more than an arm's length in front of her was a wall, spinning and churning, blazing orange and gold and red, blue and white and pale icy green. Constant flickers of lighting lit it like shattered shards of stained glass.

She backed up, Bull shifting with her. Backed up more, farther, until she stood on the far side of the bridge and could take it all in. The entire far side of the chasm was burning and freezing, blasted under the onslaught. Rock shook, shattered, fell. "Blessed Maker," she whispered. "What—?"

Bull tipped a finger under her chin and turned her head to the right.

On an outcrop of rock, hands high over her head, stood the Warden. Her eyes were fixed on the storm – storms – with her staff held outthrust. The crystal atop the staff, clenched between the claws of a silver griffon, blazed like a captured star. 

"Is she… Does she even…" But Evelyn's mind wouldn't form complete sentences.

Abruptly, Bull strode back across the bridge. He eyed the wall of elemental fury for a moment, then shoved his arm in it. When he yanked it back out, he had Dorian by the back of the neck. He pulled slowly but steadily, backing up. Dorian proved to be holding on to Cullen, who had hold of Lysette.

"What in all the blighted fucking—"

Bull cut Dorian off much as he had Evelyn, pointing him silently toward the Warden.

Cullen didn't even bother shaking the melting ice out of his hair. His eyes widened. "Neria," he breathed. 

Bull clamped a hand down on his shoulder. "I wouldn't," he warned as Cullen started toward the Warden.

Cullen swatted and shrugged his hand away and continued toward her.

"Let him," Evelyn said. "If anyone can reach her, he can. It's why you brought him, remember?"

"Merciful Andraste," Dorian said, staring at the raging, howling wall. "It's not possible."

Evelyn looked around. "We're still missing Aerlyn. Anyone have eyes on Aerlyn?"

"I had her," said Lysette, voice shaking. "But we got separated. Thom's missing too, and Loranil."

They all looked silently back at the storms.

"It's not possible!" Dorian said again, eyes wide, voice shaking.

"Plainly it is," Evelyn said, pulling her shirt up to scrub blood off her face with it.

He gestured at the storms. "No it isn't!" he said, panicked. "You can't _do_ that, no one can! You'd fry yourself before you could wave even a tenth of that around!"

Carefully, slowly, Evelyn lowered herself to the ground. Around her, the others were tossing back potions, checking their armor. Bull placed himself between Evelyn and the swirling hurricane of fire and ice. "And yet, there she is," Evelyn said as she sat. "It's… sort of beautiful. In a really disturbing way."

Dorian strode to the base of the Warden's chosen outcrop of rock. Cullen had ascended to stand behind her, to one side.

"Neria," Cullen called to her over the howling wind. "Let it go!"

"She can't hear you," Dorian yelled. "I doubt she even knows we're here."

"Of course I know you're there," Neria said, absently. "Stop distracting me. They're not all dead yet. Be careful, the ogre's coming through."

Dorian's staff clattered to the floor, dropping from his slack hands. He just stared at her.

Neria turned her head toward him. Her multicolored eyes shone with joy and pleasure, her lips curved up in a beatific smile. "You could do it, too," she said gently, "if you didn't let them make you so afraid of yourself."

A huge form lurched out of the storm, one clawed foot landing on the bridge.

Without pause, a blast of pure fire slammed from the Warden's staff into the creature.

It fell, its body staggering, crisped and blistered, landing heavily at Bull's feet.

Step by step, Dorian backed away from Neria.

She lowered her arms.

The wind fell from a scream to a whisper, fire and ice vanishing. The cavern cracked as mere stone responded to the elemental forces it had been forced to contain. Chunks of rock broke off and fell, shattering into gravel.

Neria looked at Cullen.

In one fist, he held a vial of lyrium glowing a soft blue.

Her eyes raised to his face. 

Without apology or word, he slid it back under his belt.

A sad smile twisted up one corner of her mouth. "I suppose we both have a way to go in learning to trust each other, don't we?"

"That was…" He trailed off.

"Terrifying?" she supplied, visibly bracing herself.

After a moment, he smiled at her, then laughed. "Incredible! Flawless!" he said, grabbing her shoulders and lifting her off the ground. "If Greagoir could have seen that, he'd have soiled his armor! How did you control it?"

She stared at him, hope rising. "You aren't— But the lyrium?"

He waved that off. "You were never out of control, not for a second." Pride and satisfaction echoed in his words.

"That's the secret," she said, walking down off the rock. "You don't control it. Control is the antithesis of magic. You trust yourself, you trust it. It will do what you want, but you cannot fear it." Bending, she picked up Dorian's staff and held it out to him. "You cannot fear yourself."

After a moment, Dorian wrapped his hand around the staff and nodded, slowly, once.

Neria walked on. "Thom?" she called into the quiet of the cave.

"Here," he said. "We're fine, by the way. Some warning perhaps, next time?"

"Sorry," she said, watching as he pulled Loranil and Aerlyn both from the crack in the wall he'd shoved them into. "There wasn't time."

Neria came to a stop in front of Iron Bull, looking up at him. 

Silence stretched, thin and brittle.

"Castle to c4," she said. "How am I doing now?"

The handle of his axe creaked as he tightened his grip on it.

After a moment, Neria turned her back on him. "Everyone up," she said. "They'll need awhile to regroup after that. We should push on while we can." She walked across the bridge, Cullen at her back.

Evelyn rested a hand on Bull's bicep.

"I don't think he's going to be much help controlling her," he said softly.

"Well, he was right, though. She wasn't out of control."

He frowned down at her. "And you think that's comforting?" he asked. "Now that you've seen that, imagine what's going to happen when she does break."

Evelyn's eyes went distant as she considered it. After a moment, she shook her head to blink away images of apocalypse. "Maybe she won't," she said.

"Kadan," he growled, "you had better be right."


	4. The Divide

Neria slid into her bedroll with a long sigh and a wish for a dreamless night. She had taken first watch, but either she or Thom had to be up at all times. He hadn't been difficult to rouse, thankfully, and could be trusted to stay awake.

She sent a silent prayer of thanks to Blackwall – the real one – for the find. Thom had a past as black as any she had ever come across. He had murdered an innocent family, down to the youngest child, all for the money he could make from it. He didn't even deny now that he had known it had nothing to do with the war, admitted he knew it was a political move. He had accepted Blackwall's invitation to join the Wardens as an escape from a death sentence, which actually wasn't terribly unusual. He had lied to inexperienced villagers so that they would help him fight people he said were bandits but were really his former soldiers who tracked him down to bring him to justice.

And still, Neria was grateful for him. He was also an exceptional fighter, an experienced commander, and he had been rescued from the gallows. He knew he had nothing to live for. Only the fight. Only the kill.

The Wardens would give him plenty of both.

And if, Cullen had asked her once, he betrayed them as he betrayed his own men?

Whether he liked it or not, she had told him, Thom was a Grey Warden. He would kill darkspawn because he must. Because they would be drawn to him, if he were not drawn to them. That was all she required of him. Everything else was a bonus.

Like, say, getting to sleep without keeping an eye on the world around her.

Cullen turned to face her, one hand coming up to brush away a strand of hair that was slowly working loose from her braid. 

"Go on," she said softly, a faint whisper. "Ask."

"Ask what?"

"Whatever it is that kept you up, waiting for me to come to bed so you could ask."

"What you told Dorian, is it true? You don't control it?"

"True enough," she said. 

"Does it never get away from you?"

Her lips twitched, just a little. "No, but I get away from me sometimes. It's… good. It feels so right and free. Sometimes it's difficult to remember to stop. That's all. So you _were_ worried."

"Yes," he said. "Less so when you could speak coherently."

"Putting on a brave face?"

He traced the line of her jaw but didn't speak.

"For who? For me?"

"You're baiting the Bull," he said, by way of an answer.

She sighed, softer still. "I am," she admitted. "Everything he does or thinks is about control. He's casual and friendly because it relaxes people, lets him in their guard. He plays the big dumb warrior, but he's at least as intelligent as I am."

"Beating you at chess, is he?"

"Certainly making me work for it, and I suspect he's not even playing to win, just to learn. But the point is, if he can't control me, he won't trust me. He's learning to manipulate me far more quickly than I'd like, but he won't be satisfied until he can move me around like a chess piece, perhaps not even then. I have to show him that's not possible."

He nodded. "And so I put on a brave face."

Her eyes studied his. "So that rather than playing you against me, he'll see us as a united front."

"We are a united front," he said, leaning in closer to touch a kiss between her eyes. "There's a lesson for you to learn, Circle Mage. You are not alone anymore."

It was odd, but true. She had not yet come around to thinking of Cullen as an ally. Had never weighed the benefits of their partnership in any terms but the personal. She knew he was Evelyn's commander, but somewhere inside she still hadn't moved past thinking of him only as her Templar, her one-time guardian. "So if it's all a front," she probed gently, "then you don't really trust me."

His frown brought his brows down. "I trust you," he said. "But you're walking around with a dragon at your heels, wild and untamed. You're doing the impossible, quite blithely too. And if you're wrong, even a little, the result is catastrophe."

"So you carry lyrium."

"Only to stop it. If it breaks free."

"Arishok is like that, you know," she murmured. "He used to watch me when I'd wake up until he was sure I hadn't fallen to a demon during the night. Every morning, that stare, ready to kill me. It never bothered me though. To him, it was a kindness he was offering. He was my… my bulwark. My surety that I never had to fear the demons, because he was there if I fell."

"Something like a Templar, then."

She smiled at that. "I suppose. A Qunari Templar."

"Well, I'll try not to kill you right off," Cullen said, quiet humor.

She caught her lip between her teeth. "May I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Do you really think you could stop me?"

His smile faded to nothing. "Yes," he said. "Even after everything I've seen, I know I can stop you. Must I prove it?"

She studied his expression, the flat certainty in his usually warm eyes. Uncomfortable, she turned away from him but scooted back, fitting herself in the curve of his body. "Maybe," she whispered.

Cullen slid his arm over her waist and tucked her head under his chin.

After a moment of silence, Neria whispered, "We have a very odd relationship, you and I."

"I noticed," he said.

"Are you sorry?"

"Not even once."

She folded her arms over his and closed her eyes. "Nor am I."

 

Thom Rainier sat staring at the fire. He wasn't worried about his night vision; the sense he needed didn't rely on simple sight. He wasn't as adept as Neria at picking out the feelings that would tell him darkspawn were near, but he knew it enough for this, for simple guard duty. 

He glanced toward Neria asleep in her bedroll, Cullen protectively curled around her. It wouldn't surprise him if she woke up before he could give an alarm, if they darkspawn started moving closer. Never gave up control, that one. Never trusted anyone completely.

Except he was uncomfortably sure that she trusted him. 

He frowned at the mug of strong tea in his hands. 

He'd had a hard time explaining to Evelyn exactly why he had finally turned himself in to the authorities in Val Royeaux. In his old life, he had never questioned that what he did was right. There had been justifications and outside rewards that proved to him his way was best. Correct. Just. Then he had joined the Inquisition. 

It was Evelyn, that was the problem. Her unshakable, unswerving, unfaltering faith in him, or at least in Warden Blackwall. Warden Blackwall was her trusted advisor. Warden Blackwall was her first choice of companions. She believed utterly that he would protect her, help her, give her the best advice possible, and so it had been necessary to live up to those expectations. He had found in the Inquisition something he never expected to; a desire to be respected for who he was, not just the results he got. He had seen firsthand that it was possible to do right and get respect for it without being an idiot, a weakling, or a fool.

He had found that he wanted to be worthy of the Inquisition, of Evelyn Trevelyan, of all of them, all while being well aware that he simply was not. Was not what they thought him to be. Was not fit for the regard they had for him. Thom Rainier was, at the end of the day, a murderer and a coward. So he had come clean to the world and accepted his fate.

Of course, he had thought that would be hanging, not becoming a Warden in truth, but that was life for you.

The Warden knew it all. He hadn't wanted to face a new commander with more lies and half-truths. That first night of his Joining, he had told her everything. One ugly, brutal fact after the next. And when he was done, she had simply shrugged.

"You're a Grey Warden now," she had said.

And that was that.

Now she shared everything with him. Every thought, every plan, every contingency. Every secret the Wardens had, every scrap of knowledge about the darkspawn. He had only to ask, and she would tell him everything. He knew what that was. Unless he missed his guess, the Warden-Commander was prepping him. She didn't think she'd be around much longer.

With a mumbled curse, he threw the remnants of his tea into the fire and stood. He was hungry.

Again.

While Thom rummaged for food, Loranil came to stand next to him.

He remembered when they'd first met the boy. He had been so eager to leave his Dalish clan, to see the world. Funny how a short time in a war against demons had aged him. His eyes no longer shone so brightly, his grin was no longer so ready.

War did that to people.

"Thank you," Loranil said finally. "For earlier. I couldn't see a thing. I could have fallen into that crevasse, or been burned alive."

He grunted and pulled out a thick wad of jerky. "Keep track of the whole battle. Stay near the edges," he advised. "You'll be fine, next time."

"Next time?" The elf laughed, nervous. "Does she do that often?"

"Only when they're all bunched up like that. Quicker to take them out in masses than one by one."

"This… business of being a Warden. It is not, perhaps, what I thought it would be."

Thom paused in mid-chew, then continued. Casually, he dusted his hands off and slid a dagger from his belt. "Oh?" he asked.

Loranil crouched next to him, but stared into the fire. "She knew we were in her storm."

"Yes."

"She might have killed us all. In the name of killing them."

"True," Thom agreed, shaving small pieces of jerky off a larger chunk and eating them one by one. "But if she didn't do something, we would have been overwhelmed. She assumed we'd have the brains to get out of it."

"Still. I don't know that I could make that decision."

Thom glanced over, raising one bushy eyebrow. "You're Dalish, aren't you? Don't tell me you've never killed a human just for wandering close to your camp."

"Maybe," Loranil hedged. "But I wouldn't have shot the camp full of arrows just to get one human."

"What about a camp with eight of your people, overrun with fifty humans?"

Slowly, the elf boy nodded. "I understand that." He flicked a tiny grin at Thom. "I suppose it's just hard when you're the one dodging the arrows."

Thom reached out with an empty hand to clap the boy on a shoulder. "Good lad," he said.

Visibly heartened, the elf rose and began a patrol of the outskirts of the cave. 

Thom turned his back on the fire, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness away from the warm light. He wanted to be able to see into the dim recesses of the cave if necessary.

He didn't put his dagger away.

 

Thom didn't get a chance to mention it to Neria until later the next day. The company paused in another cavern, smaller than the last and with four possible exits. One was clearly well-travelled and larger than the rest, but the Warden seemed uncertain. While the others set up for a quick meal, he walked to her side.

"You should know," he said, "the elf boy. Loranil. I think he's going to run."

She sighed. "Damn," she murmured. "It's the caves. Dalish don't do well underground. He'll make a fine Warden if we get him through this. Especially in the times we have coming, between blights. Most of us will separate. He'll do well alone." Her head bowed a little. "Maybe we can get him through. Stay close to him. I'll speak with him tonight alone, tell him stories. They always like the stories."

"And if he does run?"

She gripped her staff tighter and looked over at him without lifting her head. Large elven eyes conveyed so much with just one long look: sorrow, reproach, resignation. "If you can't do it," she said softly, "tell me now."

"I can," he said. After long moments of silence, he added, "If he runs."

"Don't let anyone see you."

He nodded, and they both looked back at the selection of tunnels.

"Well?" she asked.

He waited, listening to his own internal sense. "Logic says we take the big tunnel," he said, pointing to it.

"But?"

"But…" After a moment, he nodded his head to the smallest of them, a squat crack in the stone walls. "That's the one I want to take."

She studied it. "There's something there," she murmured. "I don't know what it is. Large."

"Broodmother?"

Chewing her lips, she thought it over. "I don't know," she said finally. "It's not usual that I can tell the types apart, not even now." She shook her head. "In any case, I agree. We may have to butter the Bull's shoulders to get him in there, though."

He chuckled as they walked back to the party.

"That way," she told them as they drew near, nodding her head back to the small tunnel before taking a chunk of bread and cheese from Cullen.

Bull growled something inaudible. "What'm I supposed to do? Crawl?"

"An intriguing notion," Neria said in a moment of rare levity, "but your horns would still get stuck. I suppose we could cut them off."

"B to a4, pawn takes pawn. Make one move for my horns, elf, you lose your ears."

"So quick to take the bait. Walk sideways, then. I'll go in first with Cullen behind me, then Kihm and Loranil to take care of any attack from the front. Behind us, Bull, then the Inquisitor, Dorian, Aerlyn and Thom to protect our backs. If the tunnel gets too tight, we'll come back."

A chorus of assents rose up, and she ate her meal as she walked back to the tunnel.

"If it gets much smaller, he's not the only one who'll have trouble," Cullen murmured to her, unslinging his shield from his back as they moved into the narrow passage.

"I know," she said. "But this is the right way, I promise you."

"One of the other passages might lead to the same chamber. Didn't you tell me once that darkspawn are like ants, making loops and circles?"

"But not all of them do. Relax, Commander. Getting a touch claustrophobic?"

"All well and good for you," he muttered, "but I'm not easy in a space where I can't use sword or shield."

She didn't reply. The tunnel did narrow a bit, enough that Cullen had to turn sideways as well, though he could pass without scraping. Bull stopped at one point to remove his weapon harness, but managed through the tightest part with only scratches on his chest and back.

Just beyond, the tunnel spread out enough to give them all breathing room, though not wide enough to permit them to walk side by side. So when Neria slowed the pace, Cullen readied his shield. "There's still not enough room in here to swing a sword," he cautioned her.

"I know," she murmured. "But there's something…" She shook her head. "I think something's blocking the tunnel ahead. Some sort of barrier. And there are darkspawn behind it. One, at least."

"Can you destroy it?"

"I'm not sure. Not without some of it com—"

"MOVE!"

Neria flattened herself against the side wall. The echo of metal on stone from ahead was all but hidden behind the sound of Bull charging down the narrow hall. One massive hand snatched Cullen's shield from him as he barreled past. She whipped back around to watch him, could barely see past him. The barrier she had spotted was moving, throwing sparks where it scraped the floor of the cave, accompanied by a deep bass bellow of rage.

Bull answered with a roar of his own.

They collided, titan to titan, shield to shield. Rock trembled and rattled down on Neria's head. The darkspawn barrier was thick hammered iron, tall enough to hide what was behind it, leaving bare inches at both top and bottom. Cullen's lighter shield dented and caved, but held.

Bull's booted feet dug into the rock of the cave as he shoved back against the might of the darkspawn Neria could feel but not see, his constant growl testament to the effort he was expending. She raised her hands, but had no clear shot, could not attack without damaging the Tal Vashoth. And if he fell, she still wouldn't get through that shield without sending a lot of backlash over her own company. She hesitated.

"Send it up!" she heard from behind her, Evelyn Trevelyan's clear, cultured voice.

Neria looked back, confused, then looked back as Bull shouted, "Make it quick!"

Evelyn sped past, light and sure. Just as she reached Bull, she dropped and slid, feet first.

With a wrench, Bull shoved his shield up, carrying the larger barrier with him. They hit the ceiling together, the impact thunderous, shaking free more rocks and dirt.

Evelyn skidded under both shields and vanished from view.

The shields slammed to the ground.

Neria didn't wait, running forward. 

"Neria! No!"

She ignored Cullen, focusing on the few inches of space above the shields, above their heads, clearance where they had dug out a hole in the rock. Clearance, if she were careful.

Between one step and the next, green/white power flared. An owl, brown and white and silent over the noise of the contest of brawn and balance, slid between the shields and the ceiling.

On the far side, Neria dropped to the earth. The corridor beyond was clear of other darkspawn, and she spun back to the conflict.

This thing was massive and pasty white. Somewhere between an Ogre and a Genlock, her mind tried to classify. Short legs but thick with muscles; heavy, long arms; huge mounded shoulders with piles of muscle rippling down its back.

One clawed foot held the Inquisitor pinned by her hair. As Neria watched, he lifted his foot and stomped again, trying to flatten the girl.

That opening was all Evelyn needed to roll away. From the other side of the shields, Bull gave a shove, knocking the creature just enough off balance to give Evelyn time to scramble to her feet beside Neria.

"What is that?" Evelyn asked, breathless, daggers drawn.

"Darkspawn," Neria said. "I can't hold it long. Can you get through that throat?"

Evelyn spun a dagger over her hand. "Let's find out."

Neria flung a hand toward the creature, eyes flaring, a ripple of unseen magic detonating around the thing. It howled in pain, went rigid, legs and arms locked. Evelyn sprang forward and up, curling as she moved. Her knees locked her tight on its back and she drove both daggers deep into its throat.

It roared, shrugging off the magic that had held it imprisoned. It couldn't release the shield, not without letting Bull through. The Tal Vashoth forced the darkspawn back as it redirected its energies to ridding itself of the thing clinging to it. It slammed its body left and right, each impact making the tunnel shake and rumble its displeasure. Rocks spat down, flat chunks of the cave crashing to the ground.

Neria took her eyes off the conflict to look up. "Uh oh," she muttered.

Evelyn didn't dare slide a knife free for a better cut; her daggers had become handholds, keeping her on the darkspawn's lumpy back. "Don't… say… uh oh!" she said in between panting breaths.

"Evelyn, get clear, now!"

To her credit, she didn't question Neria's shout. Instantly, she tore her knives free, backflipped and rolled. Neria grabbed her arm and pulled her down the tunnel, away from the battle. "Run!" she said.

Behind them, the tortured cave gave way. Rocks and dirt smacked Neria's back, dust filled her lungs and eyes, but she didn't stop, didn't dare. Evelyn shouted something to her, something she could not hear and didn't take the time to decipher. 

"I said stop!" the Inquisitor yelled, digging in her heels, jerking the lighter elf to a halt with her.

She looked back at the tunnel, glanced at the ceiling, searching for cracks.

Evelyn turned back the way they came and trotted down the tunnel. "Bull!" she yelled, waving a hand in front of her face, a futile attempt to clear the thick, gritty dust. She coughed. "Bull!"

The tunnel came to an abrupt end, packed with rock and rubble.

Neria choked and coughed, then pulled her shirt over her mouth and walked up beside Evelyn.

"It's not safe, Inquisitor," she said, voice muffled. "One collapse usually leads to others. We have to move on."

Evelyn set both palms against the rock pile. "Bull!" she cried.

Nothing.

"Inquisitor!" Gentler. "Evelyn. We must move on. If they're alive, they'll take another passage, try to meet up with us."

"He won't leave," she said, voice shaking. "He'll dig."

"No, he won't," Neria said, resting a hand lightly on Evelyn's arm. "He's too smart for that. He won't risk destabilizing the fall. He'll go around. He'll find a way."

Evelyn hung her head, still leaning on the rocks. "He was right under it."

"He's much faster than he looks. He'll have moved." She paused. "Cullen was right behind him."

That got the girl to look at her.

"We have to go on. There is no way back, there is only forward."

"Can't you blast through it?"

Neria wiped away tears, eyes watering to clear them of dirt, leaving muddy tracks on her skin. "Even if I could, it would only bring the rest of the ceiling down, and who knows if I'd kill someone on the other side."

With a sigh and a cough, Evelyn pushed away from the rocks, making them shift and rattle. "All right," she said, eyeing the barricade once more before turning. "Forward. What do we do if we find the Broodmother, just us two?"

"We kill it."

Evelyn's smile was wan and dirty, but at least it was there as they turned back down the tunnel. "I admire your optimism."

"It's not optimism if it's the only choice."

"So we're going to simply ignore the imminent death option, then."

"I've seen no reason to choose that option yet."

"Now that you mention it, neither have I."

"There you are, then."

Evelyn checked her knives, ensuring that neither had been damaged, that they slid cleanly in and out of their sheathes on her harness. "I just thought of something," she said.

Neria glanced over. "What's that?"

"Well," Evelyn paused, coughed, and spat out grey phlegm onto the cave floor. "The Inquisitor and the Hero of Ferelden, cut off from all support, heading off to fight the giant evil darkspawn?"

Neria cocked her head, puzzled.

"Varric is going to be furious that he missed this."


	5. The Advance

"And what will you be doing with your week, Inquisitor? I think I'll go spelunking with the Hero of Ferelden and eat things that try to kill us!"

Neria didn't respond, trying not to slice her hand open as she cracked the carapace of a giant spider leg. There wasn't much meat in most of the legs except where they attached to the thorax, but with eight to pick from, there was plenty for two people.

"What a lovely idea, Inquisitor. The cave spider is delicious this time of year." Evelyn sighed. 

"What did you imagine the Dead Caste ate when they spend months travelling the deep roads?" Neria asked.

"Oh I don't know. Don't dwarves have cheese or dried nug or something? I think I've gotten too soft for this life," she said.

"You are starting to remind me a little of Dorian."

"Maker forbid. If I start carrying on about the state of my hair, you have my full permission to smack me."

The carapace gave way with a sharp snap and Neria pried the meat out, setting it on a piece of shell already broken. "I'm a mage, Your Worship. I think I can manage something more civilized than that."

Evelyn took the shell plate Neria handed her and fiddled with it as the Warden worked on another leg. "May I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"You don't like me much, do you?"

Neria glanced over, surprised. "Sorry?"

"You keep calling me 'Your Worship' even though I've asked you not to. You've almost never called me Evelyn."

Neria didn't reply, just focused on the spider leg.

"Bull says you don't see me as me," Evelyn said. "He says when you look at me, you see only the Inquisition and what it would mean to ally with us."

With a sigh, Neria sat back. "I could wish you had anyone other than a Ben-Hassrath for an advisor," she said.

"So he's right."

"Right enough." She thought about how best to answer while working the hard shell open. "Is it really so different with you? When you met with Anora, did you see her or the Queen of Ferelden? Or when you met Empress Celene."

"That was different. There wasn't time to get to know them. And I only met Celene at her ball, so there was hardly a time to be informal or friendly."

Neria dug out a sliver of meat and smiled a little, murmuring, "And yet you call her Celene."

"Well it's not as if she's here."

"That's not the point. It's about how you think of her."

Evelyn frowned, confusion and irritation. "How in Thedas am I supposed to think of her?"

"You think of her as a person with a title."

"She _is_ a person with a title."

"No, she's an empire. She is the life and death of everyone within her boundaries." Neria sat back, semi-cooked meat on her dagger point. "It's the same with you. You are the Inquisition. Your reach is across empires, across nations. If you wanted, you could summon all the faithful together and take any throne you chose. You could start a war and claim it the will of the Maker."

"But I wouldn't."

"But you could."

Evelyn smiled at her a little. "But if you knew me personally, you'd know that I wouldn't."

Neria studied her, then chuckled softly. "Touché," she said, biting off a piece of meat. After she swallowed, she said, "Let's make a pact, then. I'll stop calling you Your Worship if you stop calling me the Hero of Ferelden."

"I've noticed you don't care for it much. You flinch a little when someone says it. Do you mind if I ask why?"

Any trace of humor slipped away from Neria's expressions. She studied the spider meat in her lap, but didn't eat more. "A little," she said. "Do you know how I got that title?"

Evelyn picked her way through the verbal minefield. "I know the stories," she said, "though I also know how misleading they can be."

Neria nodded, slowly. "I don't like it when people call me that," she said, "because when they do, it sounds too much like they're praising me for Alistair's death. The two are linked, impossible to separate."

Hesitantly, Evelyn began, "But… surely—"

"When the archdemon fell and Alistair died, people cheered. All around me. On top of the Fort, below in the streets. The entire city of Denerim celebrated while I held his head in my lap. I begged him to open his eyes, and all I could hear was their joy." She stared at nothing. "I almost killed the first person who called me the Hero of Ferelden."

After a moment, Evelyn said, "I'm so sorry, Neria. If I had known..."

The Warden shook her head, recalling herself to the cave. She took a deep breath, then expelled it slowly. "You couldn't. I didn't know it was such a secret, that we were in love, but it's only in some of the tales, I hear."

Evelyn poked at her food, then backtracked to safer subjects. "I wonder if everyone knows about Bull and me, then," she said. "We're not exactly hiding it."

Neria managed to work up a faint smile. "Oh, I'd say it's not common knowledge. Whispered about, perhaps, but dismissed as prurient gossip."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Two ways. One, your parents haven't shown up with an armed retinue and a bevy of eligible men. Two, Arishok doesn't know."

Evelyn grimaced. "My parents have sent messages. And you wouldn't believe the people who write. Thankfully, Josephine sorts it all for me. You know she has staff just to answer marriage proposals?"

"Nothing interesting in the mix, then?"

"Not as interesting as a seven-foot-tall, heavily muscled, highly trained Ben-Hassrath sex demon, no."

"I'll take your word for the latter part," Neria said. "If you're done eating, we should move on."

Abandoning the pieces of chitin, they continued down the hallway.

"What about part two?" Evelyn asked as they picked their way past the cobwebs.

"Hm?"

"You said the Arishok doesn't know."

"Oh, he doesn't. If he knew, you'd likely have a cadre of antaam warriors here."

That quieted Evelyn for a few hundred feet of tunnel.

"But they declared him Tal Vashoth. They sent assassins."

"The Ariqun did. Arishok might have a very different take on it." Neria paused and cocked her head. 

"But don't the Ben-Hassrath fall under the Ariqun's purview?"

"Yes," she said, continuing on. "But Arishok will be thinking of the military applications of your relationship."

"There aren't any military applications of this relationship, thank you."

"You cannot be that naïve."

"Let me be perfectly clear, Warden-Commander," Evelyn said, cold and sharp. "We have no contact with the Qunari. The Inquisition is not up for sale. My relationship is not a prybar."

"You say that as if it will matter to Arishok."

"Now who's speaking of a leader with familiarity?"

That stopped Neria. She blinked at Evelyn. "No one's told you?"

"Told me what?"

"I do know Arishok. He was one of my companions during the blight. I lived with him for several years, in Seheron and Par Vollen. I knew him when he was only Sten."

Evelyn's irritation faded away. "I knew you traveled with a Qunari mercenary…"

"When they're mercenaries, they're not Qunari. Only Tal Vashoth. And he was no mercenary. He had been sent by the then-Arishok, along with his beresaad."

Evelyn digested that, her gaze distant, inward.

Neria waited.

"You lived with them for several years?"

She nodded.

"What does he call you, this Arishok?"

"He calls me Kadan," she replied.

Evelyn looked up, met Neria's eyes. "Kadan," she echoed.

Another nod.

Evelyn walked on down the hall, Neria following in silence.

"So you understand the Qunari, then," Evelyn said eventually.

"I wouldn't go that far," Neria said. "But I understand them well enough."

"Bull said something once… Tell me, do all Tal Vashoth go insane?"

Neria studied the girl's back, but could discern nothing in particular. "I will say only that I've never met one who didn't eventually. In one way or another."

"But they're not all mindless savages."

"No," Neria said. "Some of them become simply numb. They care for nothing and no one, and live only so they can die, preferably in battle."

"I don't understand that," Evelyn murmured, peering around a corner.

Neria waited for the all-clear, used the time to frame her answer to the questioner. "The Qunari," she said, "grow up with certainty. The Qun tells them what to think, what to believe, who to be, and rewards them for behaving according to its dictates. Their whole society provides moral grounding, clarity, and reassurance. When the Tal Vashoth leave the Qunari, they leave all that behind. Whether they like it or not, whether they want it or not, the lack is telling."

Evelyn glanced behind her at the Warden. "So even though they choose to leave the Qunari, they can't reject entirely their upbringing."

"Exactly. Without that guidance and support, they have no framework for making individual choices and eventually fall back on simple instinct. Which is rarely civilized. Are you worried about Bull?"

"Yes," Evelyn said quietly.

"I wouldn't be. From what I can see, he's replaced the Qunari, the Qun itself, with you."

Startled, Evelyn turned around entirely. "Me?"

"Of course." Neria kept going, taking up the front position again. "You make the decisions, yes? About where to go, what to do, who to back, who to fight? You are, in essence, his morality now."

The distance between them grew as Evelyn stood and stared. 

"Well," she muttered after a time, "as long as there's no pressure."

Neria had stopped in the tunnel, was staring down. Next to her was a lump, egg-shaped, a disgusting shade of fleshy pink. Veins of darker red pulsed across it, lumpy tentacles held it to the floor. Another tentacle trailed off down the tunnel.

"You didn't see any turns that I missed, did you?" Neria asked quietly. "No branches or side tunnels?"

"No," Evelyn replied. "Why?" 

"I had hoped we would meet up with the others before this. It seems fate has other plans."

"What is that thing?"

"It's food," Neria said. "Or a corpse being turned into food."

Evelyn slid her daggers from their sheaths. "The broodmother?"

"Yes." Neria's green-on-blue eyes turned to Evelyn. "Are you ready for this?"

"Does it matter if I'm not?"

"No." 

Evelyn inhaled, slow and long. "All right. Now what?"

"Now, Inquisitor, I suppose we see if we both live up to our legends."

 

Dorian's staff flared, a shield brightening to shatter another rock flying down the corridor. "The good news is I think I can keep this up," he said. "The bad news is that sooner or later we're going to be up to our ears in powdered stone."

"Someone should try to talk to him," Lysette said, raising her shield to protect her face against debris.

"Absolutely," the mage agreed, not bothering to destroy the smaller rocks that rolled past. "See if Thom has come to from when he tried and got swatted, will you?"

"Enough," Cullen said, striding past the others, battered but intact shield slung on one arm. He ducked under a rock, bounced another aside, then dropped under the massive arm throwing them, putting himself between the enraged Qunari and the rockfall. "Bull, enough!"

With a roar, Bull swung a fist at Cullen. The corridor was still too narrow for him to swing wide, and Cullen took the hit on his shield, sweeping Bull's arm wide and responding with a solid flat of his foot to the Qunari's midsection, knocking him backwards. 

Before he could charge forward, Cullen yelled, "She's alive, I swear it!"

Bull's lips drew back in a snarl. "You can't know that!"

"I heard Neria tell her to get clear. She would not have let Evelyn die in a rockfall. She would have saved her."

Bull's eyes flicked, directing his gaze beyond Cullen to the pile of rubble. For all his efforts, he had barely made a dent. More rocks rolled down, further obscuring the depression he'd dug out.

"Right now, I guarantee you Neria is continuing on toward that broodmother but she would not have abandoned the Inquisitor," Cullen continued. "They are on the move. We cannot linger here. We must go back and find another route."

Anger sparked anew. "Your fucking Warden would leave her own mother behind if it meant killing a darkspawn."

"No," Cullen said. "She needs the Inquisition too badly. The Wardens have little support anywhere in Thedas right now. Neria thinks of the Wardens first, last, and always. She would not have let the Inquisitor die."

Bull chewed on that, his jaw working. He spun to face the others. "You! Vint! Move the rocks."

Dorian, leaning against the wall, looked over. "I appreciate the vote of confidence, my deeply-muscled friend, but that's simply not possible."

Bull shoved Cullen aside, stalking toward Dorian. "I've seen you do it," he growled.

Dorian straightened. "A few rocks, yes, to block a tunnel. This is orders of magnitude more weight, and no guarantee that it will stay up even if I try to put it back."

Quietly, Aerlyn spoke up. "Isn't it worth it to try?" she asked. "Kihm's under there, somewhere."

That softened Dorian's expression. "I know, Aerlyn," he said, kindly as he could. "But no. If we shift too many rocks, we could well bring the rest of the ceiling down on our heads, and possibly the Warden's and the Inquisitor's as well. That the digging didn't already cause another cave-in is a miracle in itself. It wouldn't be wise to demand two miracles in one day."

Bull looked from Dorian to the rocks. With a wordless growl, he turned his back on both and stalked down the hallway, past the others who flattened against the wall out of his way.

Slowly, Cullen let out the breath he'd been holding. 

Dorian clapped him on the shoulder. "Brave and stupid," he said, "just as I'd expect from a soldier."

"What was that about? I've never seen him like that." The two fell in behind the ragged line following Bull back down the narrowest part of the rocky tunnel.

"Hmm. I could tell you, but it would be purest speculation."

"Speculate," Cullen said, turning sideways to squeeze through.

"It's been months since he was declared Tal Vashoth, yes?" He shrugged. "Qunari rarely do well once they've abandoned their Qun."

"What do you mean?"

"Most of them eventually fall into a sort of mindless rage. They band together like wolf packs, but with fewer morals and worse table manners."

"He's never shown any inclination toward it before this."

"Yes, well, he's always had the Inquisitor before this, hasn't he?"

Cullen frowned at Dorian. "Are you telling me that love has kept him in check?"

"If I am ever so unabashedly romantic, I trust you'll cosh me on the head until I come to my senses. No, I'm saying the responsibility he's taken for protecting her, claiming her the way he has, has given him the purpose and focus that was taken from him. Absent that, absent her…" Dorian shrugged again. "Let's just pray he believes that she's alive. If he truly thinks she is dead, our only hope is to point him at the nearest cluster of darkspawn and stay out of his way."

"Why do you think I'm letting him lead?" grumbled Thom from the front of the line.

Dorian murmured, "Voices do carry in caves, don't they? In any case, Commander, I would've expected you to be more upset than you are."

"I might be, except I truly do believe she made it out of the cave-in," Cullen replied. "She yelled a warning before it started. And I cannot believe anything as mundane as a rockfall would be her end."

"How unexpectedly logical of you."

Half a smile tugged at one corner of Cullen's mouth. "Besides, I'd know it if she died."

"Of course you would," Dorian sighed. "Maker save me from romantic fools."

Bull stopped just inside the cavern with its branching tunnels. He looked over his shoulder and snarled, "Which way?"

Loranil, directly behind him, paled. "I—I don't kn—" 

"Wasn't talking to you, elf." Bull's eyes fixed on Thom. "Which. Way."

Without hesitation, Thom nodded his head toward the largest of the three remaining tunnels. "There," he said.

Bull strode away.

Dorian caught up to Thom. "How can you be certain?"

"I'm not," Thom said gruffly, following Bull, "but I blighted sure don't want to be trapped in another small tunnel if he goes crazy." After a few steps, he relented. "Most of the darkspawn go that way. Broodmothers can't leave to feed, so food gets brought. A lot of food. That means a lot of traffic."

"Please explain to me why in the name of the Maker's hairy pecs we didn't we just go that way in the first place," Dorian said.

Thom shrugged. "Instinct."

"So it's a Warden thing and I wouldn't understand, is that it?"

"If you like."

"Not particularly, no."

"And the other passage?" Cullen asked.

"The shortest way, probably," Thom said. "And the least crowded. We'll have some fighting to do before we catch up to them."

"Oh joy," muttered Dorian.

"Do you suppose she could have moved them?" asked a thin voice from behind him. "The rocks. In the tunnel."

Dorian looked back over his shoulder at Aerlyn. "She? The Warden?"

Aerlyn nodded.

"If she could have, I daresay she would have. Likely she came to the same conclusion as I; it's simply not safe."

"I suppose it's a relief to know she has some limits. Do you think she's right? About fear and control, I mean."

Dorian sighed. "I don't know," he admitted. "It is… not what they teach in Tevinter. There, they say that magic is a force to be mastered, controlled. You must approach it with a clear mind and a calm heart. A mage is never out of control, we rule our magic." He shrugged. "Or so my lessons went. On and on, day in and day out. You can only rule your magic if you rule yourself."

"We're taught the same in the Circles in Orlais," Aerlyn said. "Magic is a talent, but a terrible one. We're taught to fear it and ourselves, we move in tiny stages from one spell to the next. If anyone had been able to do one-tenth of what she can do…" She shook her head.

"The Rite of Tranquility," Dorian said.

"Yes. They'd have had their power stripped." She chewed the insides of her cheeks. "All we ever learned was fear."

Dorian's eyes went distant as he thought back to the storms that had destroyed the clustered darkspawn, fury unleashed but contained. "Maybe we were taught correctly after all."

Ahead, they heard Bull's bellow of rage, echoed instantly by one even deeper. Rock crunched. Thom charged ahead, drawing his sword. "Flank it!" he shouted as the others burst into the cavern behind him, bypassing Bull as the Qunari tried to recover from the blow that had knocked him into the cave wall. "Don't give it one target!"

The ogre towered over them, roared its defiance. It clawed the rock with one enormous foot and shook its head at the company that surrounded it. Thom sprang to the attack from the front, slashing and cutting at the beast's legs. Lysette danced behind it, dodging a backswept foot that kicked at her.

"Ware the tunnels!" Loranil cried, sending an arrow winging across the cavern and catching a Genlock in the eye.

On his chosen outcrop of rock, Dorian sent blast after blast at the giant ogre. They hit, scored, but didn't even make it blink. Bull at last rejoined the fight. He and the two warriors were keeping the ogre occupied. He saw Cullen divert from it to back up Aerlyn, whose wall of fire was closing off one entrance. With a breath, Dorian switched tactics and sent lightning arcing across the room, one blast at the ogre that forked off and licked at the encroaching darkspawn, knocking them back.

It wouldn't be enough.

What they needed, what he needed, was a storm. He flung another bolt of lightning at the ogre and cursed himself, the Warden, his father, his family, Tevinter…

_You could do it, too, if you didn't let them make you so afraid of yourself._

He wasn't afraid. The notion was absurd. He knew his power, knew its limits, had spent his life being told both. 

Aerlyn screamed, a darkspawn sword thrust through her leg. Cullen slammed his sword down, shattering the darkspawn's arm before his sword severed its neck.

_A mage is never out of control, we rule our magic._

Dorian stared at the staff in his hand, glowing faintly with the magic that still lingered.

_You could do it, too…_

Lysette went flying, hit the wall and crumpled, still and unmoving. Loranil's arrows sang through the air, quick flights that ended all too abruptly in darkspawn closing in around him. The elf's back hit the wall, and he dropped his bow to pull his short sword.

_You can only rule it if you rule yourself._

Dorian looked at his empty hand, felt and saw energy pooling in it, cool and blue and crackling.

_You trust yourself, you trust it._

He wanted it to be that easy. 

_You cannot fear yourself._

For one moment, Dorian believed.

Lightning screamed across the cavern, slammed into the ogre. Rock burned, turned molten in an instant, glowing lurid red. Brilliant spears of electricity shot away, flicking into and through the crowds of darkspawn.

Magic sang in him, danced through his body, heady as the finest drink, the most skilled lover. He couldn't repress a laugh of sheer delight and followed the lightning with gesture. Fire exploded around Loranil, blazing heat that flared, charring darkspawn to ash and gone before they could scream. Unnoticed, thin traceries of lightning flickered around him, deceptive in their gentleness until they brushed an encroaching darkspawn and drove it to its knees, twitching.

He jumped down from his perch and strode across the battlefield. With every tap of his staff on the rocky ground, another bolt of elemental magic, pure and fierce, sheared through the air and slammed into a darkspawn. In the center of the room, he turned a slow circle, sought for more enemies, something else to burn, something else to burn through, to channel this pulsing, rampant energy into. 

Nothing. He saw nothing.

But he was not ready yet, not yet. Let go of this ecstasy, this vibrating thrum of pure heady rapture that sang from his heart, his soul? No. Never.

That was Cullen shouting in his face, Cullen backing away from the focus of the storm that surrounded Dorian, one mailed hand raised to shield his eyes. They were all looking at him, all of them, fearful, uncertain. Why?

Something grabbed him, spun him. He didn't have time to see the fist that slammed into his jaw and sent him crashing into darkness.

 

Bull caught the mage as he fell, lowered him gently to the ground. "Damned Vint," he muttered.

Cullen shook his head rapidly, blinking away the afterimages of the lightning that had flared at him. "Is he all right?"

"He's fine," Bull said, setting a hand at Dorian's throat. "Pulse is jumping around like a rabbit, but it's slowing."

Aerlyn limped over, staring at the body of the other mage. "How did he… I've never seen anything like that."

"Yes, you did," Bull rumbled. "You saw the Warden-Commander. I'm guessing so did he. Fucking great. Two of them, that's all we need."

That kept them all quiet a moment.

"We have to keep going," Thom said, helping Lysette to her feet. "If they find that broodmother before we get there, they'll be alone against it. Can you wake him?"

"No," Bull said sharply, whipping his head around to glare at Thom, shoulder hunched possessively. He took a breath. "No," he said again, quieter. "I'll take him." Sliding his arms under Dorian's body, Bull stood. 

Thom glanced at Cullen, saw only bland control on the commander's face. "Fine," he said gruffly. "Come on, then."

Turning, he moved off out of the cavern and into the tunnel on the far side, toward his commander. Toward the broodmother.

He hoped.


	6. The Broodmother

"This is wrong," Neria murmured, stepping carefully over a thick, pulsing vein sprawled across the rocky cave floor.

"Anything in particular, or just the whole two-people-versus-a-giant-blobby-darkspawn bit in general?"

"There should be more resistance," she said. "We haven't encountered a single darkspawn since the cave-in."

"No," Evelyn said, "I suppose we haven't. Just those spiders. But they probably can't get through the cave-in any more than we could."

"A blessing," Neria said. "Still, some should have been trapped on this side."

"Unless they went into the broodmother chamber and out another way. That's good news. It means there is another way out."

"And it probably means the others are alive," Neria admitted. "Alive, and trying to reach us. The fighting will have drawn more darkspawn to protect the broodmother."

"There, you see? Only good news."

"That's probably why it feels so wrong," Neria said dryly. 

Evelyn chuckled. "Cheer up, we still might die fighting the broodmother."

The tunnel took an abrupt, sharp turn and ended in a room.

Broken stalagmites jutted up from the ground, their thick, blunt tops testament to how far they must have stretched at one time. Similar trunks extended down from the ceiling, unexpectedly high overhead. A ledge above them formed a broken horseshoe around the open chamber. More of the fleshy veins looped and crawled around the room, the broken stalactites, the ledge, each feeding into…

It.

The head was nominally human, wide and bald, framed by flaps of fat. Female, definitely; it's bare torso with five pairs of breasts – each set larger, flatter, floppier than the ones above it – descended down toward a lumpy, round abdomen. There were no legs, only thick tentacles that stuck out from its sides, rising up like angry serpents as the two women entered.

Broodmother.

Neria locked eyes with it, stared at it, and sidestepped deeper into the room. "I hope it doesn't talk," she muttered. "I hate the talky ones."

"They talk?"

It opened puffy lips, pulling them back from a double row of pointed teeth. Gobbets of meat fell from its mouth, landing on its chest. It howled, a sound that started as a low gurgling rumble and ended in an ear-piercing shriek that made the rock tremble.

"Not this one," Neria said. She slammed the butt of her staff into the ground and a gout of fire shot from the crystal top, lancing at the monster. "Kill it! Watch for tentacles!"

"What tenta—"

The ground beneath Evelyn's feet shattered. A massive spear of flesh shot up from the crack, slammed into her, swatted her through the air.

Evelyn twisted, hitting the ground and rolling to her feet, daggers out. "Never mind!" she called, leaping sideways as the ground crackled beside her.

Blue light shimmered around Neria, sparking where a tentacle stabbed at her, forcing her to split her attention and energy between offense and defense. "Focus on the broodmother!" she yelled. "Kill it, and the other attacks stop!"

A blow from behind sent Neria stumbling. It hadn't penetrated her defenses, but the strength behind it made her bones vibrate.

Before she could turn, there was a flicker of movement. Evelyn appeared from nothingness, twisted around Neria, daggers slashing together, then apart. Hot blood splattered from the ends of the daggers, more flowed around her feet.

"Reinforcements!" Evelyn said, vanishing again. She reappeared a moment later across the room, dancing between two darkspawn that sprinted from a tunnel, leaving behind bloody ribbons and dropping bodies. "I'll get them, you get the big one!"

Neria lifted her eyes to the broodmother. Her tongue stroked over a droplet on her lips. She smiled, slow and long, and her teeth bore the red stain of darkspawn blood.

 

"He's coming around."

The group halted in what was either a very long but narrow room, or a very wide part of the passage. Carefully, Bull lowered a groaning Dorian to the floor. "One little love tap," Bull said, peering into Dorian's eyes as they struggled to focus, "and down you go. I'll have to remember how fragile you are, next time we get physical."

"Is that what hit me?" Dorian said, grasping at the image of a glass vial in front of him and missing. "I was sure the mountain had fallen on me."

Bull took his hand and wrapped it around the Elfroot potion. "I barely touched you," he said.

Dorian started to tip the contents into his mouth, then stopped. "We haven't so many of these left," he said.

Bull nudged his hand. "Go on," he said. "We have enough."

"And drink fast," Thom said. "We have to move on."

"Give him a minute."

"One," Thom said. "Then we leave without you."

Bull growled softly as Thom moved off. "Yeah, he's a Grey Warden all right."

"I don't suppose you'd care to explain why exactly you felt it was necessary to beat me into submission?" Dorian asked, setting aside the empty vial. His fingers gingerly walked across his jawline, feeling the swelling even as it faded.

That was enough to call Bull's grin back. "Someday, when you ask me nicely, I'll show you what 'beating you into submission' really looks like," he said. "That back there was to stop you from killing us all with lightning bolts."

"From what?"

"The lightning. You lit up like a temple on a high holy day and attacked Cullen."

Dark brows drew down over amber eyes. "I did?"

Bull sat back, frowning as well. "You did. You don't remember?"

"No," Dorian said. "The last thing I remember was seeing yet another flood of darkspawn pouring in on us and realizing I was going to die in some Maker-forsaken hole in the ground without the courtesy of a decent funeral service."

"You called up lightning that melted rock," Aerlyn said softly, looking down at them both. "And a wall of fire that burned six or seven darkspawn to ash."

"Don't be absurd," Dorian said, staring at her. "That's not possible, not outside of blood magic in which I certainly have not indulged."

"It's true," Lysette said.

Dorian looked from one somber face to the next, then scrambled to his feet. "Delightful," he said. "I pull off a minor magical miracle and then get my brains so thoroughly bashed in, I can't remember at all how I did it."

"Give it time," Bull said. "You're still a little groggy."

"We should move on," Cullen said, standing several feet away in the direction they'd been moving. He cocked his head, frowning. "I think I can hear a battle ahead." He looked around. "Where's Thom?"

"He went there," Lysette said, pointing back the way they came. "With Loranil."

 

Loranil slid deeper into the passage while the others were distracted. Sweaty palms gripped his bow tighter. He hoped he had enough arrows to get back to the surface. If he could even find his way out. Surely if he got close, he'd be able to smell fresh air and not so much rot, so much stink and stuffy stillness. He had been insane to try this, insane to think he should be a Grey Warden.

Oh, the stories were all so grand! So romantic. Even their credo had appealed to him: In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice. How noble. How admirable.

How absurd.

He saw now that it was nothing but slaughter, an unending battle against an unending foe. There were no banners, no songs here, just death and blood and rotting corpses. He didn't feel like a champion of the people. He just felt sore and tired and, frankly, sickened right down to his soul.

And his time as a Warden hadn't even yet truly begun.

He gathered himself to run.

A mailed hand landed heavily on his shoulder.

With a gasp, he whirled, spinning free of the hold. His bow snapped up, an arrow nocked in the time it took to turn.

Thom stared at him. Even in the dim torchlight, Loranil could read the determined set of his jaw under his bristling beard, the tension across his forehead, but it was the sorrow in his eyes that stayed the arrow's flight. "Lad," Thom said, "don't do it."

"Stay away," Loranil said, pleased to note his voice didn't shake. "I can leave if I choose."

"No. You can't."

Loranil glanced down at the sword in Thom's hand and laughed, a bitter, harsh sound. "Do you mean to kill me if I try?"

"I won't have to," he said.

"What?"

Thom slid his sword away. "You're blighted."

Loranil blinked. "What?"

"The blight. You've been infected."

The arrow shook. "You—You don't know that. You're lying."

"I'm not. I have no reason to."

"You just want me to stay, to become a Warden! You'd say anything!"

"No," Thom said, calm and brutal. "I'd just kill you for running." He gentled his tone. "Look at the back of your hand," he said. "I'll wager you caught it the first fight we had. Spreading fast, too. I can feel it in you. If the Commander were here, she'd tell you the same thing."

Horrified, Loranil glanced at his hand. It looked like it always did, familiar scars, a freckle here and there, blue veins visible through his skin…

He looked closer, letting go of the arrow to bring his hand nearer to his eyes.

His veins weren't blue.

They were black.

"Gods," he whispered. "Oh gods."

"There's only one cure," Thom said, "and you won't find it out there. If you leave…"

"I'll die?"

"No," Thom said. "You'll change. You'll become a servant of the darkspawn, running with them, crawling through the dirt until, if you're lucky, a Warden comes along to kill you."

The bow, carved for his father's father by the greatest of his clan's ancient masters from sacred ironwood, clattered against the rock. Loranil buried his face in his hands.

He felt Thom's hand again on his shoulder, gentler this time.

"I don't want this," Loranil whispered.

"That doesn't matter now," Thom said. "We have to get back to the others. Find the Warden-Commander. She's the only one who can save you."

"I hate you both."

"Hate the darkspawn," Thom said, picking up the bow and shoving it at him. "You'll live longer."

Loranil took the bow and exhaled, head hanging. "Will you tell the others?"

"You're a Warden, boy. What passes between Wardens is none of their business."

But he noticed Thom kept his hand on his shoulder as they crossed back to their waiting party.

"Everything all right?" Cullen asked, eyes flicking between the two of them.

"Fine," Thom said, pulling Loranil past him. "Let's move."

 

Neria panted, then took a deep breath and whipped her staff at the broodmother. Lightning crackled and spat, burning into a tentacle that leaped up to intercept the bolt, searing it. It flopped to the ground, twitching fitfully.

Her left hand stayed outstretched, maintaining the invisible prison around the oversized Hurlock, the alpha that stood paralyzed in agony. Beside him, frozen darkspawn were locked in ice, trapped by the frigid blast of frostbitten magic that poured from her fingertips.

Briefly, the blue glow around her flickered.

An arrow slid through the break in her defenses and scored her cheek.

She flinched, cried out. The ice faded to nothing, crackled as one of the darkspawn fought to free itself.

Evelyn dropped like a rock from the ledge above, landing on the darkspawn with both feet. It shattered, pieces of frozen flesh scattering around her. "I don't think we're winning!" she said, ducking a rain of arrows that flew in her direction, letting them stick in the rest of the frozen darkspawn around her.

"We're still alive. That means we're winning."

"She's still alive, too, so what does that mean?" She blinked out of view just as a tentacle burst from the ground where she had been, the impact shattering the last of the frozen darkspawn.

The alpha next to them shook its head, knocked free of its magical prison. Visibly staggered, it nonetheless snarled at Neria and charged in her direction. A tentacle, still bearing char marks, crawled out of the ground to slam against her shield, each blow causing a flare in the magic. The constant flickers of lightning licking out at the broodmother died away.

The alpha sprang at her, axe raised high. Frantic, Neria scrambled to frame her magic, to call up fire, but each blow of the tentacle made her stagger.

Something landed heavily beside her with a ring of metal on stone. A shield, battered, bent, but whole, caught the axe as it descended, wrenched it from the darkspawn's grip. Cullen lunged forward, driving the point of his sword through the alpha's gaping mouth and out the back of its skull. He flashed a grin at her, baring his teeth. 

"Now kill that thing so we can go home," he said.

Neria's heart soared, and she laughed. With a gesture, she sent a fiery lance of magic through the tentacle, severing it. "As you wish, Commander," she said. Three strides took her to the base of a broken stalagmite. She sprang up to stand on it.

The broodmother howled its defiance at her.

"Oh shut up," Neria said.

She lifted her staff high over her head, pulled on all the magic in her soul, called it from the air around her, the rocks beneath her, through the unseen fabric of the Fade. The crystal on her staff brightened, glowed, blazed with blue-white power.

A column of light slammed into the broodmother, illuminating it from the inside out, throwing even its malformed skeleton into relief against its skin.

And still it screamed.

Evelyn appeared next to Neria. She stretched her left hand up beside Neria's right hand, fingers extended, reaching.

Green energy exploded into the air above the broodmother, tendrils of paler green crawling down. Below the searing roar of Neria's magic sang the crystalline ripple of the rift, harmony and counterpoint all in one. Pieces of the broodmother tore from its body, ripped away and siphoning into the rift, called into the Fade beyond. Undeniable. Limitless. 

Magic shattered the air itself.

Reality blinked out.

Darkness.

Cullen heard only his own breathing, oddly muffled. Nothing shifted in the darkness near him. There were no barks or growls of darkspawn. No clash of arms to tell him where anyone was. He didn't dare move.

A prick of blue-white brightened on the ledge above. Cullen looked up. The light illuminated Dorian's finely chiseled features, the glow slowly spreading out from him. A second flare, closer at hand, answered it, and Cullen saw Aerlyn lifting her staff higher.

Finally, a third. In the center of the cavern, up on the platform, Neria's light shone down, bathing her and the Inquisitor in soft white light.

 

They didn't make it out of the cave system before Neria called a halt.

"I'm sorry," she said again, seated on a rock. "I wanted to make it out, but…" She sighed wearily. "At least it should be safe now. Without the broodmother to protect, the darkspawn will run deeper, vanish into the deep roads."

"Stop apologizing," Cullen said, handing her a tin cup, contents steaming. "We're all exhausted."

She wrapped her fingers over his, tipping her head back to smile wearily at him. "Unfortunately. There are better ways to celebrate a victory than falling soundly asleep, you know."

He smiled and bent to kiss her.

She had thought he meant only a light brush of his lips, but the kiss quickly deepened into something more, calling a slow heat from deep within her. "Maybe," she murmured as their lips parted, "I've the energy after all."

"Ugh. Must you drool all over each other?" Dorian muttered as he walked by, carrying a small pouch to the fire.

Cullen straightened. "Yes actually," he replied. "We must."

Neria chuckled. "I don't know what he's complaining about," she said, sipping her tea carefully. "We could be worse. I just saw Bull dragging Evelyn off into the shadows."

"I didn't think you meant Thom and Loranil," Cullen said, glancing over at the warrior and the elf. "Though Thom's not left his side since before we found you."

Neria lost her smile. "I know," she said softly, for Cullen's ears alone. "It's for his sake, really, that I wanted to push on. I may send them ahead."

Surprised, Cullen looked back at her. "Are you certain? He looks the worst of all of us. If anyone could use a solid night's sleep…"

"He has the blight," she said, studying the other elf over the rim of her cup. "I only hope he'll make it back to Skyhold. I haven't the supplies here to attempt the Joining, and nothing else will stop its progress. Assuming the ritual itself doesn't kill him."

Cullen looked back at Loranil. Now that she had given it a name, he could see its effects; the overly pale skin, the dark shadows under too-sunken eyes and hollowed cheeks. "He'll make it," Cullen said, sitting next to Neria and pulling her close against him. 

She dropped her head to rest against his chest. "I hope so."

"We'll all make it," he said, kissing the top of her head.

"Not Kihm."

"No," he sighed. "I suppose not. Do you want to come back for him? Later?"

"No," she said, trying to absorb the warmth of her tea through the cup. "Buried in rubble in darkspawn tunnels is a Warden's burial, if ever there was one. Let him lie."

"As you wish, Warden-Commander."

She dredged up a faint smile, false though it was.

He pretended to believe it and held her close.

"Did you two ever finish your chess game?" he asked. "You and Bull?"

"No," she said. "But it will end in a draw."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes," she said. "I think he's discovered what it is to meet his match."

 

Bull tugged Evelyn deeper into the side tunnel, still within sight of the crackling campfire but with enough privacy that everyone could pretend.

"Should we be doing this?" she asked, grinning as she trotted to keep up with him.

"Wardens say it's safe," he said. "Darkspawn are gone." He stopped, turned her to face him.

Evelyn tilted her head back, offering up a kiss.

Abruptly, he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her hard against him, effortlessly lifting her off her feet.

Instinctively, she slipped her arms around his neck. "Bull?"

His voice was muffled against her neck. "Just… Give me a minute," he said. "I just…" His arms tightened.

Her heart contracted. She cradled the back of his head in her hands. "I'm here," she whispered. "I'm safe."

He didn't release her, didn't soften the iron demand of his embrace. "When those rocks fell…"

"I know," she said. "I thought the same of you. She pulled me away, got me out from under them as they fell. She saved my life. I ran back, screaming for you, but she said we had to move on. I didn't want to leave."

"I tried to get to you. I dug."

Evelyn laughed, surprised to find she was crying too. "I told her you would. She didn't believe me. She said you were too smart to do that, but I knew you wouldn't leave me."

He pulled away, just enough so he could look down at her. His face was haggard, worn. "Evelyn. Kadan."

"I'm safe," she repeated, bringing one hand to his cheek, tracing the line of a scar. "How could I die? My life is yours, remember?"

"I know," he said, his low voice rough. His fingers slid under her shirt, curled around her bare waist. "What I didn't know is that I gave my life to you in return."

Now, finally, he kissed her.


	7. Epilogue: The Calling

_Come._

Neria twitched, just on the verge of dreams, consciousness snared by the calling across her mind.

_Come._

It tugged at her, coaxed her, lured her up through hazy levels of sleep.

_Feast. Run. Hunt._

Her eyes snapped open. She felt Cullen's arm over her, heard his deep, even breaths. Felt them against her neck. Her skin crawled, a deep rebellion against constraint, a wild yearning to be free of him, of them all.

_Kill. Blood. Flesh. Meat._

Her stomach cramped with sudden hunger. Her mouth filled with saliva. She swallowed it down, trying to ignore the craving. What it demanded.

_Come._

She slid out from under Cullen's arm. She didn't need to look around for the sentry. She could feel Thom, the light tingle of his lesser taint that told her he was by the fire. Only one, now. Now that the darkspawn were gone. Now that she had assured them they were all dead or fled.

Silently, light as a whisper on her bare feet, she slipped from the camp and across stone, toward the crack in the far cavern wall. Into shadow.

It waited for her there, one lone darkspawn. Hurlock. Tall as a human, broad as a warrior, but grotesque. A skin-covered skull with gaping holes for nostrils, serrated fangs filling its lipless mouth, as if all human features had been burned away leaving only scar tissue and pain. Corded muscle and stretched tendon shifted as it cocked its head, corpse-white eyes staring at her.

_Eat._

It opened one fist, revealing a chunk of bloody raw flesh. A thread of black ichor ran through it, pooling in the Hurlock's palm and pattering softly to the ground at her feet. It extended the meat toward her, an offering. The stench of it offended her nose, thick and coppery, sweet with a hint of decay. Musky. She swallowed again, licked her lips.

_Breed._

It lifted its other hand, one claw-tipped finger reaching out toward her. Its pasty green-gray skin was hot against her cheek, tracing a line of fire from the corner of her eye to the edge of her mouth where it lingered before brushing across her lips.

She felt its bones against her fingers, only then realizing she was cupping its hand in hers. Slowly, her hand traced up the darkspawn's arm, sliding under to rest on its chest. Trembling fingers flattened there, feeling for the rapid beat of its pulse.

_Come._

She charred its heart in a flash of searing fire, held her breath against the backwashed stench of burnt flesh. She caught the body as it crumpled, staggered under its weight, and lowered it silently to the cave floor. 

Eyes closed, she listened for any hue or cry from the camp, but heard nothing except her own ragged breath. 

She waited until her hands stopped shaking, until her heartbeat leveled off. Carefully, quietly, she padded back across the cave, back into the fire light, back into her bedroll.

Cullen roused as she tried to slide under his arm. "Neria?" he mumbled sleepily.

"I'm fine," she whispered. "Go back to sleep."

"Sure?"

She stared at the crack in the far cavern wall. At shadow.

"I'm fine."


End file.
